Iconic Folk Singer Pete Seeger, Pro-Worker Troubadour, Dies At 94
Tuesday, January 28, 2014(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Iconic folk singer
Pete Seeger, who initially rose to fame as an outspoken
pro-worker troubadour – “We Shall Overcome” was originally a union song
– died
Jan. 28 after a brief illness. He was
94. Seeger never made a secret of his pro-worker stands, even when they got him
into political trouble in the McCarthy Era of the 1950s. He was
blacklisted by mainstream media, and
even kept out of some union halls, after refusing to name names before the
witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee. But he never lost his
love for social justice, with workers and labor the first and prime among his
causes, said Joe Uehlein, a folksinger/activist, a former top worker at the
AFL-CIO Industrial Unions Department, and a friend of Seeger’s.
With Woody
Guthrie,
Seeger was crusading for workers and inspiring them with his songs long before
World War II. After that, he extended
his zeal to the civil rights movement, adapting “We Shall Overcome” for
that. Afterwards came the peace movement, the
environmental movement and women’s rights, among other causes.
Seeger introduced
“We
Shall Overcome” to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957 at an observance in
Tennessee. “That song sticks in your
head, doesn’t it?” the civil rights leader told aides afterwards.
And “Pete was
full of
ideas how to bridge the labor-environmental gap,” Uehlein says, recounting a
recent meeting with Seeger at the folksinger’s home in Beacon, N.Y.
“And he spoke about labor, the CIO and the
AFL-CIO in glowing terms.”
“Which Side Are
You On?” “Talking Union” “There Once Was A Union Maid”
“We’ve Got To Go Down And Join The Union” “If
I Had A Hammer” are just a few of the many pro-worker pro-union songs that
Seeger either authored or popularized during his 70-plus year career.
Seeger’s
involvement
with unions extended almost until the day he died. In Buffalo for an
anti-war activists’
conference late last year, he dropped in at The Newspaper Guild’s joint
district council meeting there, too, and sang.
That’s typical, said two union leaders/folk singers who were also close
friends, Uehlein and Baldemar Velasquez, President of the Farm Labor Organizing
Committee.
“We were
doing the
Campbell Soup boycott in the 80s, and we had a big meeting at an AFSCME local
hall in New York City – and about half an hour in, Pete shows up with a banjo
on his back, walks right in like the rest of us. Just in time for a music
break. He got us all revved up,” says Velasquez.
Even when he became
an
American icon, Seeger remained outspokenly pro-worker. Invited to sing at
Democratic President
Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, Seeger sang all of “This Land Is
Your Land” – including the anti-capitalist anti-property last two verses
that
others never utter.
“Over the years,
Pete used his voice
– and his hammer – to strike blows for worker’s rights and civil rights,
world peace and environmental conservation. And he always
invited us to sing along,”
Obama said. “For reminding us where we come from and showing us where
we
need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger.”
“Pete Seeger sang
truth
to power,” said New York Musicians Local 802 President Tino Gagliardi.
Seeger was a member for decades. “As a champion of civil rights and the
dignity of working people, and of course as a musician, he was an inspiration
to anyone who believes that justice is possible.”
Yet another
memorable
moment came, after the blacklist finally faded, when the Smothers Brothers had
Seeger on their hit variety show in the late 1960s and, after an initial ban,
CBS let him sing “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy,” his noted and controversial
anti-Vietnam War song, which came from the soldiers’ point of
view. Decades later, others applied “Waist Deep”
to the Iraq War, too.
“Here’s a guy
who stood
up to the McCarthy era with just a banjo in his hand,” Uehlein says.
“We’ll carry on his legacy to our children
through song and activism,” adds Velasquez, who spent five hours last year
–
with his grandson – at a session with Seeger in Beacon. “That’s the
way to honor him.”
- by Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer
Click here for Mike
Hall’s remembrance of Seeger on the AFL-CIO’s blog.
See
also A
Final Q&A with Pete Seeger (1919-2014) by Mike Elk, In These
Times
photo: Roger Johnson and Pete Seeger leading Freedom School students singing
"We Shall Overcome" at Palmer's Crossing Community Center, August 4,
Freedom Summer, 1964, photographed by Herbert Randall