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KittyWampus

(55,894 posts)
Tue Jan 28, 2014, 12:26 PM Jan 2014

"Songs Are Sneaky Things"- Pete Seeger, Who Did Indeed Outlast The Bastards.

Bittersweet, reading memorials/obits for Pete Seeger. Sad he passed, but he was old and his death brings much to public consciousness this week.

From Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/article/20140128/ENT04/301280042/Pete-Seeger-folk-singer-and-activist-dies-at-age-94

That night, Springsteen introduced Seeger saying, “He's gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He's gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself.”

snip

“Songs won't save the planet," Seeger told his biographer David Dunlap, author of “How Can I Keep From Singing?” “But, then, neither will books or speeches. ... Songs are sneaky things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons.” He liked to quote Plato: “Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.”

snip

In 2006, Springsteen helped introduce Seeger to a new generation when he recorded “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” an album of 13 songs popularized by Seeger, including "John Henry" and "Shenandoah." Three years later, Springsteen persuaded Seeger to sing “This Land Is Your Land” with him at President Barack Obama's inaugural concert in frigid temperatures on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

“He was so happy that day,” Springsteen said later. “It was like, ‘Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.’ It was so nice.”

Much earlier, poet Carl Sandberg crowned Seeger “America's tuning folk.” But when Bob Dylan called Seeger a saint, that was going too far.

“What a terrible thing to call someone,” Seeger told USA TODAY on the eve of his 90th birthday. “I've made a lot of foolish mistakes over the years.”

But no one was better at leading sing-alongs. “There is no such thing as a wrong note,” he liked to say when leading group renditions of songs like “Amazing Grace,” “just as long as you're singing along.”

snip

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"Songs Are Sneaky Things"- Pete Seeger, Who Did Indeed Outlast The Bastards. (Original Post) KittyWampus Jan 2014 OP
Wonderful article about a righteous man. thecrow Jan 2014 #1
Clip ProSense Jan 2014 #2
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