Pete Seeger: Keeping the fire burning

Keeping the fire burning

As he often does when the weather's decent, Pete Seeger recently played a free show outdoors in Beacon, N.Y. A few dozen people packed around the stage that held Seeger, his ever-present banjo and a small band; a group of kids in red T-shirts clustered down in front, singing along. The emcee for the afternoon was Susan Wright, the music teacher at Beacon Elementary School, where Seeger visits regularly.

"Friday, he came in and we worked with the kids," Wright says. "He's kind of like having a great elder musician-historian come to visit — a combination grandfather and Santa Claus, but really skinny. They know, when he comes, we're gonna sing together. We're gonna do stuff together. They really get him."

Seeger has been singing for anyone who'll hear him throughout what he refuses to call his "career." There's good reason for that, says David Bernz, who produced two new Seeger albums.

"Almost every time that Pete interacted with the mass media, on some level they spit him back," Bernz says. "The Almanacs [Seeger's 1940s folk group], they got on the radio, and then immediately, people criticized their politics and they were off. The Weavers were on the radio; they got blacklisted. He gets a Columbia Records contract, but then he finds out they're keeping his records in the warehouse. The Smothers Brothers want to edit him out.

"The great thing about Pete is ... he would never let that stop him," Bernz says. "He sang at every little church, little school, summer camp, gathering — year in, year out, to kids and adults alike. And when you look back on it after these decades, you realize that Pete has been heard."

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