View source for Pete Seeger

{{Short description|American musician and social activist (1919–2014)}}
{{Use American English|date=December 2022}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2014}}
{{Infobox musical artist
| image            = Pete Seeger NYWTS.jpg
| caption          = Seeger playing the banjo in 1955
| background       = solo_singer
| birth_name       = Peter Seeger
| alias            = 
| birth_date       = {{birth date|mf=yes|1919|5|3}}
| birth_place      = New York City, U.S.
| death_date       = {{death date and age|mf=yes|2014|1|27|1919|5|3}}
| death_place      = New York City, U.S.
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Toshi Seeger|Toshi Ohta]]|1943|July 9, 2013|reason=died}}
| instrument       = {{flatlist|
*Vocals
*[[banjo]]
*guitar}}
| genre            = {{flatlist|
*[[American folk music]]
*[[protest music]]
*[[Americana (music)|Americana]]}}
| discography      = [[Pete Seeger discography]]
| occupation       = {{hlist|Musician|songwriter|social activist}}
| years_active     = 1939–2013
| label            = {{flatlist|
*[[Folkways Records|Folkways]]
*[[Columbia Records|Columbia]]/[[Sony Music Entertainment|CBS]]
*[[Vanguard Records|Vanguard]]
*[[Verve Forecast|Verve]]
*[[Sony Wonder|Sony Kids' Music]]/[[Sony Music Entertainment|SME]]}}
| website          = 
| module           = {{Infobox military person
|embed             = yes
|allegiance        = <!-- United States -->
|branch            = [[United States Army]]
|branch_label      = Branch
|serviceyears      = 1942–1945
|rank              = [[Corporal (United States)|Corporal]]
|unit              = [[United States Army Band]]
|battles           = [[World War II]]
|awards            = {{plainlist|
* [[American Campaign Medal]]
* [[Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal]]
* [[World War II Victory Medal]]}}

|signature         = Pete Seeger signature (cropped).jpg}}
}}

'''Peter Seeger''' (May 3, 1919&nbsp;– January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of [[The Weavers]], notably their recording of [[Lead Belly]]'s "[[Goodnight, Irene]]", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were [[blacklist]]ed during the [[McCarthyism|McCarthy Era]]. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of [[protest song|protest music]] in support of [[nuclear disarmament|international disarmament]], [[civil rights]], [[workers' rights]], [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]], [[environmentalism|environmental causes]], and ending the [[Vietnam War]].

Among the prolific songwriter's best-known songs are "[[Where Have All the Flowers Gone?]]" (with additional lyrics by [[Joe Hickerson]]), "[[If I Had a Hammer]] (The Hammer Song)" (with [[Lee Hays]] of the Weavers), "[[Kisses Sweeter than Wine]]" (also with Hays), and "[[Turn! Turn! Turn!]] (To Everything There Is a Season)", which has been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement. "Flowers" was a hit recording for [[The Kingston Trio]] (1962); [[Marlene Dietrich]], who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and [[Johnny Rivers]] (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for [[Peter, Paul and Mary]] (1962) and [[Trini Lopez]] (1963) while [[The Byrds]] had a number one hit with "Turn! Turn! Turn!" in 1965.

Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the [[Spirituals|spiritual]] "[[We Shall Overcome]]" (also recorded by [[Joan Baez]] and many other singer-activists), which became the acknowledged anthem of the [[civil rights movement]], soon after folk singer and activist [[Guy Carawan]] introduced it at the founding meeting of the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC) in 1960. In the [[PBS]] ''[[American Masters]]'' episode "[[Pete Seeger: The Power of Song]]", Seeger said it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".

==Early life==
Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at [[French Hospital (Manhattan)|French Hospital]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/honor-pete-seeger_b_1883818 | title=Honor Pete Seeger | work=[[The Huffington Post]] |last=Dreier |first=Peter |date=14 November 2012 |access-date=July 13, 2013}}</ref> His family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in the [[Puritan]], [[Calvinist]] New England tradition",<ref>{{cite book |last=Dunaway |first=David King |author-link=David King Dunaway |title=How Can I Keep From Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger |location=New York |publisher=Villard Books |year=2008 |orig-date=1981 |isbn=978-0345506085 |page=17}}</ref> traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from [[Kingdom of Württemberg|Württemberg]], Germany, had emigrated to America during the [[American Revolution]] and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pescatello |first=Ann M. |title=Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music |url=https://archive.org/details/charlesseegerlif00pesc/page/4/mode/2up |via=Internet Archive |publisher=University of Pittsburgh |year=1992 |pages=4–5|isbn=978-0-8229-3713-5 }}</ref>

Seeger's father, the composer and musicologist [[Charles Seeger|Charles Louis Seeger Jr.]],<ref name=pc1/> was born in [[Mexico City]] to American parents. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the United States at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] in the 1910s.<ref>{{cite news |last=Swed |first=Mark |title=Behind Pete Seeger, a formative father and mother |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-pete-seeger-appreciation-20140209-story.html |date=6 February 2014 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> He also helped organize the [[American Musicological Society]] and was a key founder of the academic discipline of [[ethnomusicology]]. Pete's mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), raised in [[Tunisia]] and trained at the [[Paris Conservatory of Music]], was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the [[Juilliard School]].{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=20}}

[[File:Professor Charles Louis Seeger, his wife Constance, and their sons, 23 May 1921.jpg|thumb|Peter Seeger (on father's lap) with his father and mother, Charles and Constance Seeger and brothers on a camping trip (May 23, 1921)]]

In 1911, Charles was hired to establish the music department at UC Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken [[pacifism]] during [[World War I]].<ref>According to Dunaway, the British-born president of the university "all but fired" Charles Seeger (''How Can I Keep From Singing'', p. 26).</ref> Charles and Constance moved back east, making their base of operations on the estate of Charles's parents in [[Patterson, New York]], about {{convert|50|mi}} north of New York City. When Peter was eighteen months old, Charles and Constance set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South.{{sfn|Pescatello|1992|pp=83–85}} Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York [[Institute of Musical Art]] (later [[Juilliard School|Juilliard]]), whose president and family friend, [[Frank Damrosch]], was Constance's adoptive "uncle".{{sfn|Tick|1997|p=130}} Charles also taught part-time at the [[New School for Social Research]].

At four, Pete was sent away to boarding school, but was brought home a year and a half later when his parents learned the school failed to inform them that he had contracted [[scarlet fever]].<ref name=Wilkinson_article>{{cite magazine |last=Wilkinson |first=Alec |title=The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music |date=9 April 2006 |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |pages=44–53 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/17/the-protest-singer}}</ref> He attended first and second grades in [[Nyack, New York]], before being sent away to another boarding school in [[Ridgefield, Connecticut]].{{sfn|Wilkinson|2009|p=43}}

Career and money tensions led to marital problems between Charles and Constance. When Charles discovered in 1927 that Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, he became enraged and a series of separations and temporary reconciliations ensued.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=32}} Pete was eight at the time of the first marital split. As Seeger's biographer [[David King Dunaway]] writes, "Like many children of divorce, Pete was caught between parents and developed an aversion to family quarrels."{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=32}} In 1932, Charles married his composition student and assistant, [[Ruth Crawford Seeger|Ruth Crawford]], now considered by many to be one of the most important [[Modernism (music)|modernist]] composers of the 20th century.<ref>See [[Judith Tick]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=xwLTDOR8LUYC ''Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composer's Search for American Music'' (1997).] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230511214404/https://books.google.com/books?id=xwLTDOR8LUYC |date=May 11, 2023 }}</ref> Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to [[Carl Sandburg]]'s influential folk song anthology, the [[The American Songbag|''American Songbag'']] (1927), and later created original settings for eight of Sandburg's poems.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.peggyseeger.com/ruth-crawford-seeger/ruth-crawford-seeger-biography |title=David Lewis, ''Ruth Crawford Seeger Biography in 600 Words'' on website of her daughter, Peggy Seeger |publisher=Peggyseeger.com |date=February 14, 2005 |access-date=August 28, 2012 |archive-date=August 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120806133026/http://www.peggyseeger.com/ruth-crawford-seeger/ruth-crawford-seeger-biography |url-status=live }}</ref> Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government's [[Resettlement Administration|Farm Resettlement program]], the [[Works Projects Administration|WPA]]'s [[Federal Music Project]] (1938–1940) and the wartime [[Pan American Union]].<ref>According to [[Judith Tick]], Charles was fired from his job at Juilliard because Frank Damrosch sided with Constance in the Seeger divorce. ''Ruth Crawford Seeger'', pp. 224–25.</ref> After [[World War II]], he taught [[ethnomusicology]] at UC Berkeley and [[Yale University]].{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|pp=22,24}}{{sfn|Winkler|2009|p=4}}

In 1935, Pete was selected to attend [[Camp Rising Sun (New York)|Camp Rising Sun]] (CRS), the George E. Jonas Foundation's international leadership camp, held every summer in upstate New York. He remained a loyal alumnus through the decades and attended a CRS event at age 93 in July 2012.<ref>{{cite news |last=Berger |first=Joseph |title=Shaped by Camp, Alumni Fight to Prevent Its Move |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/nyregion/shaped-by-camp-alumni-fight-to-prevent-its-move.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=6 September 2015}}</ref>

Pete's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, would go on to become a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the [[Dalton School]] in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at [[Ethical Culture Fieldston School|Fieldston Lower School]] in [[the Bronx]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://peteseegersite.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/john-seeger-dies-at-95/|title=John Seeger Dies at 95|date=January 18, 2010|work=[[WordPress.com]]|access-date=November 5, 2010|archive-date=April 17, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190417232441/https://peteseegersite.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/john-seeger-dies-at-95/|url-status=live}}</ref> Pete's uncle, [[Alan Seeger]], a noted American [[war poet]] ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in [[World War I]]. All four of Pete's half-siblings from his father's second marriage—Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny)—became folk singers. [[Peggy Seeger]], a well-known performer in her own right, married British folk singer and activist [[Ewan MacColl]]. [[Mike Seeger]] was a founder of the [[New Lost City Ramblers]], one of whose members, [[John Cohen (musician)|John Cohen]], married Pete's half-sister Penny, also a talented singer, who died young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children.

==Career==
===Musical development===
Despite being classical musicians, Peter's parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the [[ukulele]], becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, he enrolled in the [[Avon Old Farms School]] in [[Avon, Connecticut]], from which he graduated in 1936. During the summer of 1935, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string [[banjo]] for the first time at the [[Bascom Lamar Lunsford#The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival|Mountain Dance and Folk Festival]] in western [[North Carolina]] near [[Asheville, North Carolina|Asheville]], as he related in an April 1963 interview on Folk Music Worldwide.<ref>{{Cite web |title=PETE SEEGER - Folk Music Worldwide, 1963 Interview |url=https://www.folkmusicworldwide.com/pete-seeger.html |access-date=2025-01-19 |website=www.folkmusicworldwide.com}}</ref> The festival was organized by local [[folkloristics|folklorist]], lecturer, and traditional music performer [[Bascom Lamar Lunsford]], whom Charles had hired for [[Resettlement Administration|Farm Resettlement]] music projects.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|pp=48–49}} The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers:

<blockquote>watched square-dance teams from [[Bearwallow, North Carolina|Bear Wallow]], Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and [[Soco Gap]]; heard the five-string banjo player [[Samantha Bumgarner]]; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the [[Cherokee]] reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being made there as well. As Lunsford's daughter would later recall, those country people "held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park."{{sfn|Tick|1997|p=239}}</blockquote>

For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a "conversion experience". Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic plucking technique from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|pp=49-51}} The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at the [[Greenwich Village]] loft of painter and art teacher [[Thomas Hart Benton (painter)|Thomas Hart Benton]] and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played "[[Cindy (folk song)|Cindy]]" and "[[Old Joe Clark]]" with his students [[Charles Pollock|Charlie]] and [[Jackson Pollock]]; friends from the "[[Old-time music|hillbilly]]" recording industry; and [[avant-garde music|avant-garde]] composers [[Carl Ruggles]] and [[Henry Cowell]]. It was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "[[John Henry (folklore)#Music|John Henry]]" for the first time.<ref>Judith Tick, ''Ruth Crawford Seeger'', p. 235. According to John Szwed, Jackson Pollock, later famous for his "drip" paintings, played harmonica, having smashed his violin in frustration, see: ''Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World'' (Viking, 2010), p. 88.</ref> 

Seeger enrolled at [[Harvard College]] on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.<ref>{{harvnb|Wilkinson|2006|p=51}}. Seeger reportedly lost his Harvard scholarship after failing one of his winter exams.</ref> He dreamed of a career in journalism and took courses in art as well. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the [[Dalton School]], where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York state with the Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling [[puppet theater]] "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico".{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|pp=61-63}} One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An October 2, 1939 ''[[Daily Worker]]'' article reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:

{{blockquote|During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring "suppers" and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

"They fed us too well", the girls reported. "And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm".

In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers' problems, about [[antisemitism]] and Unionism, about war and peace and social security—"and always", the puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers". They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the [[Congress of Industrial Organizations|CIO]] in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers' bodies, the [[American Labor Party]] and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.<ref>Emery, Lawrence, "Interesting Summer: Young Puppeteers in Unique Tour of Rural Areas", quoted on [https://web.archive.org/web/20060919131726/http://www.peteseeger.net/DW10021939.htm Pete Seeger website]</ref>}}

That fall, Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting [[Alan Lomax]], a friend of his father's, at the [[Archive of American Folk Song]] of the [[Library of Congress]]. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "[[African American music|race]]" and "[[Old-time music|hillbilly]]" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the [[Organization of American States]]), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–1953).<ref>The resultant 22-page [[Mimeograph|mimeographed]] "List of American Folk Music on Commercial Recordings", issued in 1940 and mailed by Lomax out to academic folklore scholars, became the basis of [[Harry Everett Smith|Harry Smith's]] celebrated ''[[Anthology of American Folk Music]]'' on [[Folkways Records]]. Seeger also did similar work for Lomax at [[Decca Records|Decca]] in the late 1940s.</ref> Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk-singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and [[Nicholas Ray]]'s weekly [[CBS|Columbia Broadcasting]] show ''Back Where I Come From'' (1940–41) alongside [[Josh White]], [[Burl Ives]], [[Lead Belly]], and [[Woody Guthrie]] (whom he had first met at [[Will Geer]]'s Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for [[migrant workers]] on March 3, 1940). ''Back Where I Come From'' was unique in having a [[Racial integration|racially integrated]] cast.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20081204075941/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851095,00.html Folk Songs in the White House], ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', March 3, 1941</ref> The show was a success, but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. 

[[File:PeteSeeger2.jpg|thumb|Pete Seeger entertaining [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party marking the opening of the United Federal Labor Canteen, [[Congress of Industrial Organizations|CIO]], in then-segregated Washington, D.C., 1944<ref>From the ''Washington Post'', February 12, 1944: "The Labor Canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, CIO, will be opened at 8 p.m. tomorrow at 1212 18th st. nw. Mrs. Roosevelt is expected to attend at 8:30 p.m."</ref>]]

From 1942 to 1945, Seeger served in the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] as an Entertainment Specialist, eventually attaining the rank of corporal.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=Person&ID=279850|title=Seeger, Pete, Cpl|website=army.togetherweserved.com|access-date=2020-04-01|archive-date=January 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210116132431/https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=Person&ID=279850|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=Billboard_article>{{cite magazine |title=Military Questioned Woody Guthrie About Pete Seeger's Wartime Loyalty During WWII |date=19 December 2015 |magazine=Billboard |url=https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/military-fbi-woody-guthrie-pete-seeger-wartime-world-war-two-6813894/}}</ref> He had been initially trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain American troops with music, including in the [[Pacific Ocean theater of World War II|South Pacific]].<ref name=Billboard_article/> Later, when people asked him what he did in the [[World War II|war]], he always answered, "I strummed my banjo."<ref>{{cite web | last=Minzesheimer | first=Bob | title=Pete Seeger taught America to sing, and think |website=USA TODAY | date=2014-01-28 | url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/01/28/pete-seeger-obit-appreciation/4781403/ | access-date=2024-10-27}}</ref> During the war, he also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by [[Norman Corwin]].

In 1949, Seeger worked as the vocal instructor for the progressive [[City and Country School]] in [[Greenwich Village]], New York.

===Early activism===
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the [[Young Communist League, USA|Young Communist League]] (YCL), then at the height of its influence. In 1942, he joined the [[Communist Party USA]] (CPUSA),<ref>{{cite book |last1=Reineke |first1=Hank |title=Rising Son: The Life and Music of Arlo Guthrie |date=2023 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=9780806193588 |series=American Popular Music |volume=10 |page=42}}</ref> but left in 1949.<ref>{{harvnb|Wilkinson|2009|pp=116-117}}: Seeger later commented, "Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in '49, though. ... I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in '38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though, and I didn't examine closely enough what was going on. ... I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was."</ref>

In early 1941, while still only 21, Seeger started performing as a member of the [[Almanac Singers]] along with Millard Lampell, [[Cisco Houston]], [[Woody Guthrie]], Butch Hawes and [[Bess Lomax Hawes]], and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of [[Phonograph record#78 rpm disc developments|78s]] on [[Keynote Records|Keynote]] and other labels: ''[[Songs for John Doe]]'' (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), ''[[Talking Union]]'', and an album each of sea shanties and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, ''Songs for John Doe'' was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines, such as "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]]'s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This “anti-war” anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party USA line after the 1939 [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], and in particular after the Soviet invasion of Poland on the 17th of September that year which maintained that the greatest threat was ‘militarism’, ostensibly as hostile to the Soviet Union- a shift from the ‘anti-fascist’, pro-engagement preceding line. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time, as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the [[History of the Communist Party USA#1935–1939: Popular Front|Popular Front]], which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt's [[arms embargo]] on [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Loyalist Spain]] (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xTKvo-cXv3EC&q=Roosevelt+refusal+to+aid+Loyalist+Spain+mistake|first=Robert|last=Dallek|title="'Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945"'|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1995|page=180|access-date=August 28, 2012|isbn=9780199826667|archive-date=February 2, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240202002332/https://books.google.com/books?id=xTKvo-cXv3EC&q=Roosevelt+refusal+to+aid+Loyalist+Spain+mistake#v=snippet&q=Roosevelt%20refusal%20to%20aid%20Loyalist%20Spain%20mistake&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, which, under its owner, [[Henry Luce]], had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' ''Songs for John Doe'' album, accusing it of scrupulously echoing "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J.P. Morgan war". Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste", though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed (correctly, as it turned out) that few people would ever hear it. More alarmed was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government [[Carl Joachim Friedrich]], an adviser on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In a review in the June 1941 ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'', entitled "The Poison in Our System", he pronounced ''Songs for John Doe'' "strictly subversive and illegal", "whether Communist or Nazi financed", and "a matter for the attorney general", observing further that "mere legal suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of ‘poison’,<ref>[http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm "The Poison in Our System" (excerpt from the ''Atlantic Monthly'') by Carl Joachim Friedrich] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603002452/http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm |date=June 3, 2013}}. Note: Dunaway misses the significance of Carl Joachim Friedrich, when he mistakenly refers to him as "Karl Frederick," an error other writers who relied on Dunaway repeated.</ref> the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.<ref>Friedrich's review concluded: "The three records sell for one dollar and you are asked to 'play them in your home, play them in your union hall, take them back to your people.' Probably some of these songs fall under the criminal provisions of the Selective Service Act, and to that extent it is a matter for the Attorney-General. But you never can handle situations of this kind democratically by mere suppression. Unless civic groups and individuals will make a determined effort to counteract such appeals by equally effective methods, democratic morale will decline." Upon United States entry into the war in 1942, Friedrich became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council for Democracy, charged with combatting isolationism, and had his [http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm article on the Almanacs] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603002452/http://www.peteseeger.net/poison.htm |date=June 3, 2013 }} reprinted as one of several pamphlets which he sent to radio network executives.</ref>

While the U.S. had not declared war on the Axis powers in mid-1941 (and would not do so until the Pearl Harbor attack that December), the country was energetically producing arms and ammunition for its allies overseas. Despite the boom in manufacturing this concerted rearming effort brought, African-Americans were barred from working in defense plants. Racial tensions rose as Black labor leaders (such as [[A. Philip Randolph]] and [[Bayard Rustin]]) and their white allies began organizing protests and marches. To combat this social unrest, President Roosevelt issued [[Executive Order 8802]] (the Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war—angering some leftists (in particular, Trotskyist groups). Copies of ''Songs for John Doe'' were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.<ref>Although the Almanacs were accused – both at the time and in subsequent histories – of reversing their attitudes in response to the CPUSA's new party line, "Seeger has pointed out that virtually all progressives reversed course and supported the war. He insists that no one, Communist Party or otherwise, told the Almanacs to change their songs. (Seeger interview with [Richard A.] Reuss 4/9/68)" quoted in William G. Roy, [http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/8/1/2/pages108124/p108124-1.php "Who Shall Not Be Moved? Folk Music, Community and Race in the American The Communist Party and the Highlander School," ff p. 16]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090302214224/http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/8/1/2/pages108124/p108124-1.php |date=March 2, 2009 }}</ref> The Almanac Singers' ''Talking Union'' album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by [[Folkways Records|Folkways]] (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year, the Almanacs issued ''[[Dear Mr. President (Almanac Singers album)|Dear Mr. President]]'', an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President", was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his lifelong credo:

{{poemquote|Now, Mr. President,
We haven't always agreed in the past, I know,
But that ain't at all important now.
What is important is what we got to do,
We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do,
Other things can wait.

Now, as I think of our great land ...
I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday,
Just give us a little time.

This is the reason that I want to fight,
Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right.
No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because
I want a better America, and better laws,
And better homes, and jobs, and schools,
And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like
"You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro,"
"You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"
"You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."

So, Mr. President,
We got this one big job to do
That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through,
Let no one else ever take his place
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done.}}

Seeger's critics later continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated ''Songs for John Doe''. In 1942, a year after the ''John Doe'' album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York ''World Telegram'' (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and [[Henry Luce]]'s right-hand man, [[C. D. Jackson]], Vice President of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, had founded "to combat all the Nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist" antiwar groups in the United States).<ref>Blanche Wiessen Cook, ''Eisenhower Declassified'' (Doubleday, 1981), page 122. "The Council was a limited affair," Cook writes, "... that served mostly to highlight Jackson's talents as a propagandist."</ref>

After returning from WWII service, Seeger and others established [[People's Songs]], conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to "create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People".<ref>People's Songs Inc. People's Songs Newsletter No 1. February 1946. [[Old Town School of Folk Music]] Resource center collection.</ref> With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, [[Henry A. Wallace]], who ran as a third-party candidate on the [[Progressive Party (United States, 1948)|Progressive Party]] ticket. Despite attracting enormous crowds nationwide, Wallace did not win any electoral votes. Following the election, he was excoriated by many for accepting campaign help from Communists and their ‘fellow travelers’ such as Seeger and singer [[Paul Robeson]].<ref>American Masters: "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song – [[KQED (TV)|KQED]] Broadcast 2-27-08.</ref>

===Spanish Civil War songs===
Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the republican forces in the [[Spanish Civil War]]. In 1943, with [[Tom Glazer]] and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called ''[[Songs of the Lincoln Battalion]]'' on Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "[[There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama|There's a Valley in Spain Called Jarama]]" and "[[¡Ay Carmela! (song)|Viva la Quince Brigada]]". In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called ''Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades''. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary ''Six Songs for Democracy'' (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by [[Ernst Busch (actor)|Ernst Busch]] and a chorus of members of the [[Thälmann Battalion]], made up of volunteers from Germany. The songs were "Moorsoldaten" ("[[Peat Bog Soldiers]]", composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps); "[[Freiheit (song)|Die Thaelmann-Kolonne]]", "Hans Beimler", "Das Lied von der Einheitsfront" ("Song of the United Front" by [[Hanns Eisler]] and [[Bertolt Brecht]]), "Lied der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song of the International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals", known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").

===Group recordings===
As a self-described "split tenor" (between a tenor and a countertenor),<ref name=Wilkinson_article/> Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: the [[Almanac Singers]] and [[the Weavers]]. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with [[Millard Lampell]] and Arkansas singer and activist [[Lee Hays]], was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement,<ref>See Wikipedia entry on the [[Congress of Industrial Organizations|CIO]].</ref> racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, [[Bess Lomax Hawes]], [[Sis Cunningham]], [[Josh White]], and [[Sam Gary]]. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" to avoid compromising his father's government career.

In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as the Weavers, named after the title of an 1892 play by [[Gerhart Hauptmann]], about a workers' strike (which contained the lines "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). They did benefits for strikers, at which they sang songs such as "Talking Union", about the struggles for unionisation of industrial workers such as miners and automobile workers.<ref>Ingram, David. "The Jukebox in the Garden: Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960." ''Humanities Source''. 2010 Vol. 7. Retrieved October 14, 2014.</ref> Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, [[Ronnie Gilbert]], and [[Fred Hellerman]]; later [[Frank Hamilton (musician)|Frank Hamilton]], [[Erik Darling]], and [[Bernie Krause]] serially took Seeger's place. In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language. The Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. The Weavers' string of major [[Chart-topper|hit]]s began with "[[On Top of Old Smoky]]" and an arrangement of [[Lead Belly]]'s signature waltz, "[[Goodnight, Irene]]",<ref name=pc1>{{cite web |title=Pop Chronicles Interviews No. 104 - Pete Seeger |date=14 February 1968 |url=https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1692108/?q=Pete%20Seeger |website=[[Pop Chronicles]] |last=Gilliland |first=John}}</ref> which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950,<ref name=Wilkinson_article/> and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli song "[[Tzena, Tzena, Tzena]]".<ref name=pc1/> Other Weavers hits included [[Woody Guthrie discography#1940, RCA Victor Sessions, Dust Bowl Ballads|"Dusty Old Dust" ("So Long It's Been Good to Know You" by Woody Guthrie)]], "[[Kisses Sweeter than Wine (song)|Kisses Sweeter Than Wine]]" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), and the [[Zulu people|Zulu]] song by [[Solomon Linda]], "[[Wimoweh]]" (about [[Shaka]]), among others.

The Weavers' performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953, at the peak of their popularity, when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent [[reunion tour]], which produced a hit version of [[Merle Travis]]'s "[[Sixteen Tons]]", as well as LPs of their concert performances. "[[Kumbaya]]", a [[Gullah]] black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late 1950s, [[the Kingston Trio]] was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter's repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of ''Billboard'' chart hits and, in its turn, spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In the documentary film ''[[Pete Seeger: The Power of Song]]'' (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a [[jingle]] for a [[Tobacco advertising|cigarette commercial]].

===Banjo and 12-string guitar===
[[File:Pete Seeger banjos at the American Banjo Museum.jpg|thumb|Four long-neck banjos inspired by Seeger's. The instrument on far left was closely constructed to match Seeger's. [[American Banjo Museum]].]]
In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', a book that sold over 100,000 copies in the 1962 edition<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simmons |first=Michael John |date=2014-01-28 |title=Banjo Bible: Pete Seeger's Book That Launched a Thousand Fingers - Fretboard Journal |url=https://www.fretboardjournal.com/features/banjo-bible-pete-seegers-book-launched-thousand-fingers/ |access-date=2025-10-04 |website=Fretboard Journal - Dedicated to the history of guitars and other fretted instruments. |language=en}}</ref> and is credited as teaching folk musicians such as Jerry Gray of [[The Travellers (Canadian band)|The Travellers]] to play the instrument.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=daUtAAAAIBAJ&dq=%22How+to+Play+the+Five-String+Banjo%22&pg=PA53&article_id=1819,5569460 |title=The Montreal Gazette |publisher=The Montreal Gazette |language=en}}</ref> Seeger also recorded an instructional album alongside the manual. Both are available for free via [[Smithsonian Folkways]], a nonprofit record label of the [[Smithsonian Institution]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=How to Play the 5-String Banjo |url=https://folkways.si.edu/pete-seeger/how-to-play-the-5-string-banjo/music-instruction/music/album/smithsonian |access-date=2025-10-04 |website=Smithsonian Folkways Recordings |language=en-US}}</ref> He went on to invent the ''long-neck'' or ''Seeger'' banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region,{{Citation needed|reason=5-string banjo history outside Appalachia as witnesses by Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York manufacturers prior to the Great Depression, especially in 1880s-1910s. See [[American Banjo Museum#Classical, 1880s-1910s]]|date=February 2020}} the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in [[David King Dunaway]]'s biography, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string", Pete Seeger "gentrified" the more percussive traditional [[Appalachia]]n "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head".{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=100}} {{citation needed span|text=Although what Dunaway's informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated with the style.|reason=This is OR as presented; a reliable citation for these multiple claims is required.|date=April 2025}}

Inspired by his mentor Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "[[This machine kills fascists]]", Seeger emblazoned his banjo head in 1952 with the slogan "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender", writing those words on every subsequent banjo he owned.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/guano/114357902/in/photostream/ |title=Pete Seeger's banjo |date=March 18, 2006 |publisher=Flickr |access-date=September 5, 2012 |archive-date=March 22, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140322184319/http://www.flickr.com/photos/guano/114357902/in/photostream/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the [[12-string guitar]], an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated with [[Lead Belly]], who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and [[Capo (musical device)|capo]]-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of [[Drop D tuning|drop-D (DADGBE) tuning]], tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.acousticguitar.com/issues/ag115/gear115.html |title=Acoustic Guitar Central |publisher=Acousticguitar.com |access-date=November 20, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120913142102/http://www.acousticguitar.com/issues/ag115/gear115.html |archive-date=September 13, 2012 }}</ref>

===Interest in steelpan===
In 1956, Seeger and his wife, Toshi, traveled to [[Port of Spain]], [[Trinidad and Tobago|Trinidad]], to seek out information on the [[steel drum]]. The two searched out a local panyard director, Kim Loy Wong, and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then-new national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.<ref>{{cite AV media |url=https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/video/music-from-oil-drums-1956 |title=Music from Oil Drums |via=YouTube |website=When Steel Talks |access-date=May 15, 2025}}</ref> He was attempting to include the unique flavor of the instrument in American folk music.

===McCarthy era===
In the 1950s, and indeed consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Henry Wallace campaign), and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. However, with the ever-growing revelations of [[Joseph Stalin]]'s atrocities and the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]], he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Socialism. He left the CPUSA in 1949, but remained friends with some who did not leave it, although he argued with them about it.<ref name="powersong">[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/seeger_p.html "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080824145940/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/seeger_p.html |date=August 24, 2008 }} – PBS American Masters, February 27, 2008</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080212011235/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/seeger_interview/index.html Pete Seeger Interview] PBS American Masters.</ref>

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the [[Hollywood Ten]] for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]] (which would have suggested to many that his testimony might be self-incriminating). Instead, as the Hollywood Ten had done, he declined to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."<ref>Pete Seeger to the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955. Quoted, along with some other exchanges from that hearing, in Wilkinson, "The Protest Singer" (2006), p. 53.</ref><ref>{{cite book
|last =United States Congress - House Committee on Un-American Activities|title=Investigation of Communist Activities, New York Area— Part VII (Entertainment)|publisher=Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off.|series =Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Fourth Congress, First Session, August 17 and 18, 1955| volume =pt. 7|date=August 17–18, 1955|pages =Testimony of Peter Seeger, pp. 2447–2459| url =https://archive.org/details/investigationofc557unit}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Naming Names |last=Navasky |first=Victor S. |publisher=Viking |location=New York |year=1980 |page=421 |isbn=0670503932}} Seeger later explained to Navasky: "Look, the Fifth means they can't ask ''me'', the First means they can't ask anybody."</ref> Seeger's refusal to answer questions that he believed violated his fundamental constitutional rights led to a March 26, 1957 indictment for [[contempt of Congress]]. For some years thereafter, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to ten one-year terms in jail (to be served concurrently), but in May 1962, an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.<ref name=Wilkinson_article/><ref>[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12619416914263979951 ''United States v. Seeger''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160803003141/https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12619416914263979951 |date=August 3, 2016 }}, 303 F. 2d 478 (2d Cir. 1962).</ref>

In 1960, the [[San Diego]] school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] obtained an [[injunction]] against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. Almost 50 years later, in February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of its predecessors.<ref name=SignOnSD>{{cite web|last=Dillon|first=Raquel Maria|title=School board offers apology to singer Pete Seeger|url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/feb/11/pete-seeger-apology-021109/?zIndex=51324|work=Sign on San Diego|access-date=February 13, 2011|archive-date=June 28, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628201001/http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/feb/11/pete-seeger-apology-021109/?zIndex=51324|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Folk music revival===
To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger worked gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps, and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for [[Moe Asch]]'s [[Folkways Records]] label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as "[[Where Have All the Flowers Gone?]]" (co-written with [[Joe Hickerson]]), "[[Turn! Turn! Turn! (song)|Turn! Turn! Turn!]]" adapted from the [[Book of Ecclesiastes]],<ref name=pc1/> and "[[The Bells of Rhymney]]" by the Welsh poet [[Idris Davies]] (1957),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/caerphilly/pages/bellsofrhymney.shtml |title=BBC News – South East Wales |publisher=BBC |access-date=November 20, 2012 |archive-date=February 10, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090210115704/http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/caerphilly/pages/bellsofrhymney.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref> gained wide currency. Seeger was the first person to make a studio recording of "[[Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream]]" in 1956. Seeger also was closely associated with the [[Civil Rights Movement]] and in 1963 helped organize a landmark [[Carnegie Hall]] concert, featuring the youthful [[Freedom Singers]], as a benefit for the [[Highlander Folk School]] in Tennessee. This event, and [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]] in August of that same year, brought the civil rights anthem "[[We Shall Overcome]]" to wide audiences. He sang it on the 50-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, along with 1,000 other marchers.<ref>Whitehead, John. "Pete Seeger: Changing the World One Song at a Time." ''Waxahachie Daily Light''. May 30, 2013. Rutherford Institute. Accessed on October 14, 2014.</ref>
By this time, Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in [[Greenwich Village]], as a longtime columnist in ''[[Sing Out!]]'', the successor to the People's Songs ''Bulletin'', and as a founder of the topical [[Broadside Magazine|''Broadside'']] magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of [[People's Songs]], used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] or Wobblies' ''Little Red Song Book'', compiled by Swedish-born union organizer [[Joe Hill (activist)|Joe Hill]] (1879–1915) (the ''Little Red Song Book'' had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie, who was known to carry it around).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Briley|first=Ronald|date=2006|title="Woody Sez": Woody Guthrie, the "People's Daily World," and Indigenous Radicalism|journal=California History|volume=84|issue=1|page=34|doi=10.2307/25161857|jstor=25161857|issn=0162-2897}}</ref>

Seeger toured Australia in the fall of 1963.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=285}} He helped spark a folk boom throughout the country at a time when popular music tastes competed between folk, the [[Surf music|surfing craze]], and the British rock invasion that gave the world [[The Beatles]] and [[The Rolling Stones]], among others. Seeger's single "[[Little Boxes]]", written by Malvina Reynolds, peaked at No. 24 on the [[Kent Music Report|Australian record charts]] in February 1964.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.top100singles.net/2013/02/every-amr-top-100-single-in-1964.html#show |publisher=Top 100 Singles |title=Every AMR Top 100 Single in 1964 |date=9 February 2013}} "Little Boxes" was Seeger's only solo tune to make the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 70.</ref> Folk clubs sprang up all over the nation; folk performers were accepted in established venues; Australian performers singing Australian folk songs—many of their own composing—emerged in concerts and festivals, on television, and on recordings; and folk-music performers from overseas were encouraged to tour Australia.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2018/01/25/1302413/how-folk-music-went-from-daggy-to-cool |last=Smith |first=Graeme |publisher=[[Monash University]] |date=25 January 2018 |title=How folk music went from daggy to cool}}</ref>

The long television blacklist of Seeger began to ease in the mid-1960s when he hosted a regionally broadcast educational folk-music television show, ''[[Rainbow Quest]]''. Among his guests were [[Johnny Cash]], [[June Carter]], [[Reverend Gary Davis]], [[Mississippi John Hurt]], [[Doc Watson]], [[the Stanley Brothers]], [[Elizabeth Cotten]], [[Patrick Sky]], [[Buffy Sainte-Marie]], [[Tom Paxton]], [[Judy Collins]], [[Hedy West]], [[Donovan]], [[The Clancy Brothers]], [[Richard Fariña]] and [[Mimi Fariña]], [[Sonny Terry]] and [[Brownie McGhee]], Mamou Cajun Band, [[Bernice Johnson Reagon]], the Beers Family, [[Roscoe Holcomb]], [[Malvina Reynolds]], Sonia Malkine, and [[Shawn Phillips]]. Thirty-nine<ref name="powersong"/> hour-long programs were recorded at [[WNJU]]'s [[Newark, New Jersey|Newark]] studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The [[Smothers Brothers]] ended Seeger's national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing "[[Waist Deep in the Big Muddy]]" on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.<ref>''Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'', by David Bianculli, Touchstone, 2009.</ref>

In November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs", about the death-row inmate [[Delbert Tibbs]], who was later [[exonerated]]. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.peteseeger.net/songwriter_magazine.htm |title=Songwriter – Pete Seeger and Writing For Freedom |publisher=Peteseeger.net |date=July 28, 1976 |access-date=September 5, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120912091020/http://www.peteseeger.net/songwriter_magazine.htm |archive-date=September 12, 2012 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>
[[File:SO!vol49 2 Pete Seeger.PNG|right|thumb|Seeger at 86 on the cover of ''[[Sing Out!]]'' (Summer 2005), a magazine he helped found in 1950]]

Seeger also supported the Jewish Camping Movement. He came to [[Surprise Lake Camp]] in [[Cold Spring, New York]], over the summer many times.<ref>{{cite news|last=Turton|first=Michael|title=Surprise Lake Camp: Rich History, Big Presence|url=https://highlandscurrent.org/2011/08/14/surprise-lake-camp-rich-history-big-presence/|access-date=January 28, 2014|newspaper=Highlands Current|date=August 14, 2011|archive-date=September 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200926080456/https://highlandscurrent.org/2011/08/14/surprise-lake-camp-rich-history-big-presence/|url-status=live}}</ref> He sang and inspired countless campers.<ref>{{cite news|last=Bank|first=Justin|title=Pete Seeger, Neil Diamond and me|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/01/28/pete-seeger-neil-diamond-and-me/?wp_login_redirect=0|newspaper=Washington Post|access-date=January 28, 2014|date=January 28, 2014|archive-date=December 23, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141223091732/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/01/28/pete-seeger-neil-diamond-and-me/?wp_login_redirect=0|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan====
Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of [[Bob Dylan]]; he was responsible for urging A&R man [[John H. Hammond|John Hammond]] to produce Dylan's first LP on [[Columbia Records|Columbia]], and for inviting him to perform at the [[Newport Folk Festival]], of which Seeger was a board member.<ref>Fellow Newport Board member [[Bruce Jackson (scholar)|Bruce Jackson]] writes, "Pete Seeger, more than any of the other board members, had a personal connection with Bob Dylan: it was he who [in 1962] had convinced the great Columbia A and R man John Hammond, famous for his work with jazz and blues musicians, to produce Dylan's eponymous first album, ''Bob Dylan''. If anyone was responsible for Bob Dylan's presence on the Newport Stage [in 1965], it was Pete Seeger". See Bruce Jackson, ''The Story Is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 148.</ref> There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the [[Paul Butterfield|Butterfield Blues Band]], brought into the 1965 [[Newport Folk Festival]] that Seeger threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan's manager [[Albert Grossman]] and Festival board members (who besides Seeger also included [[Theodore Bikel]], [[Bruce Jackson (scholar)|Bruce Jackson]], [[Alan Lomax]], festival MC [[Peter Yarrow]], and [[George Wein]]) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier, there had been a scuffle and a brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax. The festival's board, in an emergency session, had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but then backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws [[Odetta]] and [[Peter, Paul and Mary]].<ref>[[John Szwed]], ''Alan Lomax, 'The Man Who Recorded the World'' (Viking, 2010), p. 354. The Butterfield Blues Band, a new, integrated Chicago-based electric band, was the closer in an afternoon blues workshop entitled "Blues: Origins and Offshoots", hosted by Lomax, that had included African-American blues greats [[Willie Dixon]], [[Son House]], [[Memphis Slim]], and a prison work group from Texas, along with bluegrass pioneer [[Bill Monroe]] and the Bluegrass Boys. Lomax, upset that Butterfield's group had been shoehorned into his workshop, reportedly complained aloud about how long they took to set up their electrical equipment and introduced them with the words, "Now, let's find out if these guys can play at all." This infuriated Grossman (who was angling to manage the new group), and he responded by attacking Lomax physically. [[Mike Bloomfield|Michael Bloomfield]] stated, "Alan Lomax, the great folklorist and musicologist, gave us some kind of introduction that I didn't even hear, but Albert found it offensive. And Albert went upside his head. The next thing we knew, right in the middle of our show, Lomax and Grossman were kicking ass on the floor in the middle of thousands of people at the Newport Folk Festival. Tearing each other's clothes off. We had to pull 'em apart. We figured 'Albert, man, now there's a manager!{{'"}} quoted in Jan Mark Wolkin, Bill Keenom, and Carlos Santana's, ''Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues'' (San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books), p. 102. See also Ronald D. Cohen's introduction to "Part III, The Folk Revival (1960s)" in ''Alan Lomax: Selected Writings'', Ronald D. Cohen, ed. (London: Routledege), p. 192.</ref> Although Seeger has been portrayed as a folk purist who opposed Dylan's "[[Electric Dylan controversy|going electric]]",<ref>Rock critic [[Greil Marcus]] wrote: "Backstage, Peter Seeger and the great ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax attempted to cut the band's power cables with an axe." See Greil Marcus, ''Invisible Republic, the Story of the Basement Tapes'' [1998], republished in paperback as ''The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes'' (New York: Holt, 2001), p. 12. Marcus's apocryphal story was elaborated by [[Maria Muldaur]] and [[Paul Nelson (critic)|Paul Nelson]] in [[Martin Scorsese]]'s film ''No Direction Home'' (2005)</ref> when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, Seeger said:

<blockquote>I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "[[Maggie's Farm]]," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo [[Howlin' Wolf]] yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.<ref>David Kupfer, [http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/406.html Longtime Passing: An interview with Pete Seeger] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170425061234/http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/406.html |date=April 25, 2017 }}, ''Whole Earth'' magazine, Spring 2001. Accessed online October 16, 2007.</ref></blockquote>

One version of the Newport Festival controversy, as well as a positive depiction of Seeger's early 1960s efforts to boost an unknown Bob Dylan, is dramatized in the 2024 film ''[[A Complete Unknown]]'', where [[Edward Norton]] plays Seeger.<ref name="IMDb">{{cite web |title=A Complete Unknown|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11563598/reference/ |publisher=[[IMDb]] |access-date=25 November 2024}}</ref>

===Vietnam War era and beyond===
[[File:Pete Seeger Stern Grove.jpg|thumb|Pete Seeger, Stern Grove, San Francisco, August 6, 1978]]
A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the [[Vietnam War]], Seeger [[satire|satirically]] attacked then-President [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Lyndon Johnson]] with his 1966 recording, on the album ''[[Dangerous Songs!?]]'', of [[Len Chandler]]'s children's song "[[Beans in My Ears]]". Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears", implying that 
"Alby Jay" (a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ") was deaf to war protesters’ concerns.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiBEANEARS.html |title=Beans in My Ears |publisher=Sniff.numachi.com |access-date=November 20, 2012 |archive-date=May 1, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501224842/http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiBEANEARS.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

During 1966, Seeger and [[Malvina Reynolds]] took part in environmental activism. The album ''[[God Bless the Grass]]'' was released in January of that year and became the first album in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same ideologies of nationalism, populism, and criticism of big business.<ref>Ingram, David (2008). 'My Dirty Stream : Pete Seeger, American Folk Music, and Environmental Protest', ''Popular Music'' Vol. 31, pp22. Routeledge Taylor & Francis Group. October 14, 2014</ref>

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "[[Waist Deep in the Big Muddy]]", about a [[Captain (land)|captain]]—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in [[Louisiana]] during World War II. With its lyrics about a platoon being led into danger by an ignorant captain, the song's anti-war message was obvious—the line "the big fool said to push on" is repeated several times.<ref>Gibson, Megan. "Songs of Peace and Protest: 6 Essential Cuts From Pete Seeger." ''Time.com'', January 28, 2014. p.1 Business Source Complete. October 14, 2014.</ref> In the face of arguments with the management of [[CBS]] about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the ''[[Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour]]'', the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the [[Vietnam War]] as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show,<ref>''Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'', CBS, Season 2, Episode 1, September 10, 1967.</ref> after wide publicity,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.peteseeger.net/givepeacechance.htm |title=How "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" Finally Got on Network Television in 1968 |publisher=Peteseeger.net |access-date=November 20, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130805061813/http://www.peteseeger.net/givepeacechance.htm |archive-date=August 5, 2013 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show on February 25, 1968.<ref>''Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'', CBS, Season 2, Episode 24, February 25, 1968.</ref>

At the November 15, 1969,<!-- November is correct; incorrect October date widely quoted on web -pls do not change --> [[Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam|Vietnam Moratorium March]] on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in singing [[John Lennon]]'s song "[[Give Peace a Chance]]" as they rallied across from the White House. Seeger's voice carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like "Are you listening, [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]]?" between the [[refrain|chorus]]es of protesters singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance."<ref>See, for example, [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_09.html this PBS documentary] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170322233355/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_09.html |date=March 22, 2017 }} and this {{YouTube|ZUn-EGsNt58|recording}}.</ref>

In the documentary film ''The Power of Song'', Seeger mentions that he and his family visited the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1972.<ref>{{Cite video|people=Brown, Jim (Director)|title=The Power of Song|medium=DVD|publisher=Genius Products LLC|date=2005|isbn=1-59445-156-7}}</ref> [[Phạm Tuyên]] composed "Let me hear your guitar, my U.S. friend" ("Gảy đàn lên hỡi người bạn Mỹ") as a tribute to Seeger's support for the DRV. When Seeger and his wife arrived at the airport, Phạm Tuyên greeted them and they sang the song together.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Phạm |first=Tuyên |title=Gảy đàn lên hỡi người bạn Mỹ – Câu chuyện sau khi bài hát ra đời |url=https://nhacsiphamtuyen.vn/gay-dan-len-hoi-nguoi-ban-my-cau-chuyen-sau-khi-bai-hat-ra-doi.html |access-date=2024-07-10 |website=Nhạc sĩ Phạm Tuyên |language=vi}}</ref> 

[[File:Pete Seeger-1979.jpg|thumb|Seeger in 1979]]
Being a supporter of progressive labor unions, Seeger had supported [[Edward Sadlowski|Ed Sadlowski]] in his bid for the presidency of the [[United Steelworkers of America]]. In 1977, Seeger appeared at a fundraiser in [[Homestead, Pennsylvania]]. In 1978, Seeger joined American folk, blues, and jazz singer [[Barbara Dane]] at a rally in New York for striking coal miners.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6QAuAgAAQBAJ&q=Pete+Seeger+Barbara+Dane&pg=PA209|title=The Pete Seeger Reader|first1=Ronald D.|last1=Cohen|first2=James|last2=Capaldi|date=December 16, 2013|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|page=209|via=Google Books|isbn=9780199336128|access-date=October 9, 2020|archive-date=February 2, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240202002231/https://books.google.com/books?id=6QAuAgAAQBAJ&q=Pete+Seeger+Barbara+Dane&pg=PA209#v=snippet&q=Pete%20Seeger%20Barbara%20Dane&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> He also headlined a benefit concert—with bluegrass artist [[Hazel Dickens]]—for the striking coal miners of Stearns, Kentucky, at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on June 8, 1979.<ref name="Dickens">{{Cite book |last=Dickens |first=Hazel |title=Working girl blues : the life and music of Hazel Dickens |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-252-09097-4 |location=Urbana |oclc=809471478 }}</ref> Also in 1979, he was honored with the [[Eugene V. Debs Award]] for Social Justice by the [[Eugene V. Debs Foundation]], in [[Terre Haute, Indiana]].

In 1980, Pete Seeger performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The performance was later released by Smithsonian Folkways as the album ''Singalong Sanders Theater, 1980''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://folkways.si.edu/pete-seeger/singalong-sanders-theater-1980/american-folk-struggle-protest/music/album/smithsonian|title=Singalong Sanders Theater, 1980|website=Smithsonian Folkways Recordings|access-date=November 1, 2018|archive-date=November 1, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181101181228/https://folkways.si.edu/pete-seeger/singalong-sanders-theater-1980/american-folk-struggle-protest/music/album/smithsonian|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Hudson River sloop ''Clearwater''===
[[File:Sloop Clearwater3 - Photo by Anthony Pepitone.jpg|thumb|Sloop [[Hudson River Sloop Clearwater|''Clearwater'']] sailing up the [[Hudson River]]]]

In 1966, Seeger and his wife Toshi founded the [[Hudson River Sloop Clearwater]], a nonprofit organization based in [[Beacon, New York]], that sought to protect the [[Hudson River]] and surrounding wetlands and waterways through advocacy and public education. It constructed a floating ambassador for this environmental mission, the sloop ''Clearwater'', and began an annual music and environmental festival, today known as the [[Great Hudson River Revival]].<ref name=upi.com>{{cite news |first=Gerry |last=Harrington |title=Movement afoot to name bridge after Pete Seeger |url=http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Music/2014/01/31/Movement-afoot-to-name-bridge-after-Pete-Seeger/UPI-15581391204873/ |work=[[United Press International]] |date=2014-01-31 |access-date=2014-02-03 |archive-date=February 3, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203082935/http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Music/2014/01/31/Movement-afoot-to-name-bridge-after-Pete-Seeger/UPI-15581391204873/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Reflection on support for Soviet communism===
In 1982, Seeger performed at a benefit concert for the [[1982 demonstrations in Poland]] against the Polish government. His biographer [[David King Dunaway|David Dunaway]] considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of socialism in its Soviet form.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=103}} In the late 1980s, Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time".{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=103}} In his autobiography ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone'' (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? I think so." He went on to put his thinking in context:

<blockquote>How could [[Hitler]] have been stopped? [[Maxim Litvinov|Litvinov]], the Soviet delegate to the [[League of Nations]] in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist [[Dave Dellinger]]'s book, ''From Yale to Jail&nbsp;... ''<ref>David T. Dellinger, ''From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993 {{ISBN|0-679-40591-7}}).</ref> At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely cruel misleader". I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the [[Inquisition]], the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by [[Crusades|Crusaders]]. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for [[Indian removal|stealing land from Native Americans]] and [[Slavery in the United States|enslaving blacks]]. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for [[Genghis Khan]]. And supporters of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] could apologize for his support of [[Somoza family|Somoza]], of [[Dixiecrat|Southern White Democrats]], of [[Francoist Spain|Franco Spain]], for putting [[Japanese American internment|Japanese Americans in concentration camps]]. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She's part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let's look ahead.<ref>''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography'', edited by Peter Blood (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Sing Out Publication, 1993, 1997), page 22.</ref><ref name="nyt1" /></blockquote>
[[File:Pete Seeger 1.jpg|thumb|150px|left|Seeger in 1999]]

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it".<ref name="The Old Left">{{cite news | title = The Old Left | work = [[The New York Times]] Magazine | url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D7123BF931A15752C0A963958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/S/Seeger,%20Pete | date = January 22, 1995 | access-date = May 22, 2010 | archive-date = February 2, 2024 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240202002244/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/22/magazine/sunday-january-22-1995-the-old-left.html | url-status = live }}</ref>
In later years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, [[David Boaz]]—[[Voice of America]] and [[NPR]] commentator and president of the [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] [[Cato Institute]]—wrote an opinion piece in ''[[The Guardian]]'', entitled "Stalin's Songbird", in which he excoriated ''[[The New Yorker]]'' and ''[[The New York Times]]'' for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as "someone with a longtime habit of following the party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the [[Almanac Singers]]' May 1941 ''Songs for John Doe'', contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from ''Dear Mr. President'', issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/14/post33?commentpage=1 | title=Stalin's songbird | access-date=March 27, 2009 | work=The Guardian | location=London | first=David | last=Boaz | date=April 14, 2006 | archive-date=October 31, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131031061051/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/14/post33?commentpage=1 | url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Boaz's article is reprinted in his book, ''The Politics of Freedom'' (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 2008) pp. 283–84</ref>

In 2007, in response to criticism from historian [[Ronald Radosh|Ron Radosh]], a former [[Trotskyite|Trotskyist]] who now writes for the conservative ''[[National Review]],'' Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues":{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=422}}

<blockquote><poem>I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe.
He ruled with an iron hand.
He put an end to the dreams
Of so many in every land.
He had a chance to make
A brand new start for the human race.
Instead he set it back
Right in the same nasty place.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Do this job, no questions asked.
I got the Big Joe Blues.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Wapshott |first=Nicholas |date=27 September 2007 |title=Seeger turns on Uncle Joe |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/09/joe-blues-folk-music-seeger |magazine=New Statesman |archive-date=24 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080924104806/http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/09/joe-blues-folk-music-seeger |volume=136 |issue=4864}}</ref></poem></blockquote>

The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you're right, I should have asked to see the [[gulag]]s when I was in U.S.S.R. [in 1965]."<ref name="nyt1">Daniel J. Wakin, [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/arts/music/01seeg.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin "This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin Over a Decade Ago"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016191050/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/arts/music/01seeg.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin |date=October 16, 2015 }}, ''New York Times'', September 1, 2007. Accessed October 16, 2007.</ref>

===Later work===
[[File:Pete_Seeger_&_Kabir_Suman.jpg|thumb|Seeger (left), performing with [[Kabir Suman]] at [[Kolkata]] in 1996]]
[[File:Pete Seeger2 - 6-16-07 Photo by Anthony Pepitone.jpg|thumb|Seeger at the [[Clearwater Festival]] in June 2007]]

Seeger appears in the 1997 documentary film ''[[An Act of Conscience]]'', which was filmed between 1988 and 1995. In the film, Seeger joins a group of demonstrators protesting in support of [[war tax resister]]s [[Randy Kehler]] and Betsy Corner, whose home was seized by the [[Internal Revenue Service]] (IRS) after the couple openly refused to pay their federal income taxes as a protest against war and military spending.<ref>{{cite news|last=Anderson|first=John|date=May 4, 1998|title=The IRS Plays Tax and Consequences|url=https://newspapers.com/article/newsday/140135927/|newspaper=[[Newsday]]|location=New York, New York|page=B7|access-date=February 7, 2024|via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref>

In 2003, Pete Seeger was a participant in an anti-Iraq war protest.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/02/16/in-new-york-thousands-protest-a-war-against-iraq/ba206965-e456-46a6-b393-73223acd6676/|title=In New York, Thousands Protest a War Against Iraq|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=February 15, 2003}}</ref>

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister [[Peggy Seeger|Peggy]], his brothers [[Mike Seeger|Mike]] and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the [[American Folklife Center]] in honor of the [[Seeger family]], held at the [[Library of Congress]] in Washington, D.C.,<ref>[https://www.loc.gov/folklife/Seegersymposium/ "How Can I Keep from Singing?": A Seeger Family Tribute] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170530030925/http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Seegersymposium/ |date=May 30, 2017 }}. 2007 symposium and concert, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (web presentation includes program, photographs, and webcasts).</ref> where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.

[[File:Renehan Seeger March2008.jpg|thumb|Pete Seeger (right), 88 years old, photographed in March 2008 with his friend, the writer and musician [[Edward J. Renehan, Jr.|Ed Renehan]]]]

In September 2008, [[Appleseed Recordings]] released ''At 89'', Seeger's first studio album in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the ''[[Late Show with David Letterman]]'', singing "Take It From Dr. King".

On January 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandson [[Tao Rodríguez-Seeger]] joined [[Bruce Springsteen]] and the crowd in singing Woody Guthrie's "[[This Land Is Your Land]]" in the finale of Barack Obama's inaugural concert in Washington, D.C.<ref name=Tuscaloosa>Tommy Stevenson, [http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/82100:this-land-is-your-land-like-woody-wrote-it "'This Land Is Your Land' Like Woody Wrote It"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140220194941/http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/82100:this-land-is-your-land-like-woody-wrote-it |date=February 20, 2014 }}, ''Truthout'', January 19, 2009. Accessed February 3, 2014.</ref><ref name=USAToday>Maria Puente and Elysa Gardner, [https://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-01-18-inaug-concert_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip "Inauguration opening concert celebrates art of the possible"], ''[[USA Today]]'', January 19, 2008. Accessed January 20, 2009.</ref> The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of [[This Land Is Your Land#Confirmation of two other verses|two verses]] not often included in the song, one about a "private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a [[Great Depression|Depression]]-era relief office. The former's final line, however, "This land was made for you and me", is modified to "That side was made for you and me".<ref name=Tuscaloosa /><ref>{{YouTube|wnvCPQqQWds|Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial}}. Accessed December 3, 2014.</ref>

Over the years, he lent his fame to support numerous environmental organizations, including South Jersey's Bayshore Center, the home of New Jersey's tall ship, the oyster schooner ''A.J. Meerwald''. Seeger's benefit concerts helped raise funds for groups so they could continue to educate and spread environmental awareness.<ref>Jennings, Jennifer. "Pete Seeger: The environmental side of his activism." ''Atlantic City Natural Health Examiner''. January 28, 2014. Atlantic City Examiner. Accessed on October 5, 2014.</ref> On May 3, 2009, at the Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at [[Madison Square Garden]] to celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] during the summer),<ref name="seeger90">{{cite web |url=http://www.seeger90.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090321013656/http://seeger90.com/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 21, 2009 |title=Web site announcing Seeger's 90th birthday celebration |publisher=Seeger90.com |access-date=August 28, 2012 }}</ref> ranging from [[Dave Matthews]], [[John Mellencamp]], [[Billy Bragg]], [[Bruce Springsteen]], [[Tom Morello]], [[Eric Weissberg]], [[Ani DiFranco]] and [[Roger McGuinn]] to [[Joan Baez]], [[Richie Havens]], [[Joanne Shenandoah]], [[R. Carlos Nakai]], [[Bill Miller (musician)|Bill Miller]], [[Joseph Fire Crow]], Margo Thunderbird, [[Tom Paxton]], [[Ramblin' Jack Elliott]], and [[Arlo Guthrie]]. Cuban singer-songwriter [[Silvio Rodríguez]] was also invited to appear, but his visa was not approved in time by the United States government. Consistent with Seeger's longtime advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the [[Hudson River Sloop Clearwater]],<ref name="clearwater">{{cite web |url=http://www.clearwater.org/ |title=Hudson River Sloop Clearwater |publisher=Clearwater.org |access-date=November 20, 2012 |archive-date=October 2, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141002231745/http://www.clearwater.org/ |url-status=live }}</ref> a non-profit organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the [[Hudson River]]. Seeger's 90th birthday was also celebrated at [[The College of Staten Island]] on May 4.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jimharpermusic.com/forpetessakesing.html |title=For Pete's Sake, Sing! Ithaca, New York |publisher=jimharpermusic.com |access-date=4 November 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090428114051/http://www.jimharpermusic.com/forpetessakesing.html |archive-date=28 April 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2396756/ |title=For Pete's Sake, Sing! - Happy 90th Birthday Pete Seeger |publisher=upcoming.yahoo.com |access-date=2015-07-22 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120715050842/http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2396756/ |archive-date=July 15, 2012 |df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://unionsong.com/seeger90.html |title=Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations |publisher=Unionsong.com |access-date=2015-07-22 |archive-date=May 4, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090504145634/http://unionsong.com/seeger90.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
On September 19, 2009, Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, which was particularly notable because the festival does not normally feature folk artists.

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed the song ''"''God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the [[Deepwater Horizon oil spill]].<ref>Patrick Doyle, [https://web.archive.org/web/20100729142430/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/184956 Video: Pete Seeger Debuts New BP Protest Song: Songwriter talks inspiration behind "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You"], ''Rolling Stone'' online, July 26, 2010. Retrieved July 27, 2010.</ref> A performance of the song by Seeger, Wyatt, and friends was recorded and filmed aboard the sloop ''Clearwater'' in August for a single and video produced by [[Richard Barone]] and Matthew Billy, released on election day, November 6, 2012.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvnsB_kVNYI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/cvnsB_kVNYI| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|title=Pete Seeger - God's Counting On Me, God's Counting On You (Sloop Mix) (feat. Lorre Wyatt & friends) |publisher=YouTube |date=2012-11-05 |access-date=2015-07-22}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
{{external media | width = 210px |headerimage=[[File:Pete Seeger11.jpg|210px]]
 | video1 = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVML_U6W9dc Civil Rights History Project: Pete Seeger], 57:42, [[Library of Congress]]<ref name="LOCcrhp">{{cite web | title =Civil Rights History Project | publisher =[[Library of Congress]] | url =https://www.loc.gov/collection/civil-rights-history-project/about-this-collection/ | access-date =March 11, 2016 | archive-date =March 3, 2016 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20160303113711/https://www.loc.gov/collection/civil-rights-history-project/about-this-collection/ | url-status =live }}</ref> }}
On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with [[Occupy Wall Street]] to Columbus Circle in New York City.<ref>{{cite web |last=Moynihan |first=Colin |url=http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/pete-seeger-leads-protesters-on-foot-and-in-song/ |title=Pete Seeger Leads Protesters in New York, on Foot and in Song |work=The New York Times |date=October 22, 2011 |access-date=September 5, 2012 |archive-date=October 23, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111023115131/http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/pete-seeger-leads-protesters-on-foot-and-in-song/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger's Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle, where he performed with his grandson, [[Tao Rodríguez-Seeger]], [[Arlo Guthrie]], [[David Amram]], and other celebrated musicians.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IPd_OkeVtI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/4IPd_OkeVtI| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|title=Pete Seeger and Occupy Wall Street Sing 'We Shall Overcome' at Columbus Circle (10/21/11) |date=October 21, 2011 |publisher=Youtube |access-date=November 20, 2012}}{{cbignore}}</ref> The event, promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was livestreamed, and was dubbed by some "the Pete Seeger March".

In January 2012, Seeger joined the Rivertown Kids in paying tribute to his friend Bob Dylan, performing Dylan's "[[Forever Young (Bob Dylan song)|Forever Young]]" on the [[Amnesty International]] album ''[[Chimes of Freedom (album)|Chimes of Freedom]].''<ref name="Forever Young">{{Cite web |last=Stafford |first=David |date=2014-12-04 |title=Pete Seeger, "Forever Young" |url=https://www.wwoz.org/blog/3510 |access-date=2022-12-16 |website=WWOZ |archive-date=December 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221217065420/https://www.wwoz.org/blog/3510 |url-status=live }}</ref> This song, Seeger's last single, marked Seeger's only music video, which went viral in the wake of his death two years later.<ref name="Forever Young video">{{Cite news |last=Lewis |first=Randy |date=2014-01-30 |title=Pete Seeger's 'Forever Young' music video goes viral |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-pete-seeger-obituary-forever-young-music-video-20140130-story.html |access-date=2022-12-16 |newspaper=Washington Post |archive-date=December 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221217065922/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-pete-seeger-obituary-forever-young-music-video-20140130-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

On December 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along with [[Harry Belafonte]], [[Jackson Browne]], [[Common (rapper)|Common]], and others, at a concert to bring awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal of Native American activist [[Leonard Peltier]]. The concert was held at the [[Beacon Theatre (New York City)|Beacon Theatre]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/celebrity-activists-harry-belafonte-pete-seeger-common-and-michael-moore-come-together|title=Simon Moya-Smith, "Celebrity Activists Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Common and Michael Moore Come Together for Leonard Peltier"|publisher=indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com|access-date=April 23, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130327115446/http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/celebrity-activists-harry-belafonte-pete-seeger-common-and-michael-moore-come-together|archive-date=March 27, 2013|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitled ''Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems''. This two-CD spoken-word work was conceived of and produced by noted percussionist [http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jeff-haynes-mn0000316957 Jeff Haynes] and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his life against a background of music performed by more than 40 musicians of varied genres.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/_b2c/media/files/11-03-2013/2013-03-11_PeteSeegerTheStormKing.pdf|title=Hachette Book Group, "Hachette Audio and Jeff Haynes Introduce Pete Seeger: the Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems: Seeger's Spoken Word Set to All New Multi-Genre Music"|publisher=www.hachettebookgroup.com|access-date=March 17, 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130319073550/http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/_b2c/media/files/11-03-2013/2013-03-11_PeteSeegerTheStormKing.pdf|archive-date=March 19, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> The launch of the audiobook was held at the [[Dia:Beacon]] on April 11, 2013, to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred people, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among them [[Samite (musician)|Samite]], [[Dar Williams]], [[Dave Eggar]], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20140203084126/http://www.fieldrecorder.com/docs/notes/stearnsbio.htm Richie Stearns] of [[the Horse Flies]] and [[Natalie Merchant]]) performing live under the direction of producer and percussionist [http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jeff-haynes-mn0000316957 Haynes].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20130412/NEWS01/304120035/VIDEO-Seeger-legacy-grows-release-new-album-Storm-King-|title=Barry, John, "Seeger Legacy Grows With Release of New Album 'Storm King'; DIA-Beacon Event Offers a Taste of Folk Singer's Spoken-Word Recordings"|publisher=Poughkeepsiejournal.com|access-date=April 22, 2013|archive-date=April 12, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130412105958/http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20130412/NEWS01/304120035/VIDEO-Seeger-legacy-grows-release-new-album-Storm-King-|url-status=live}}</ref>

On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was in New York City for the 400-year commemoration of the [[Two Row Wampum Treaty]] between the Iroquois and the Dutch. On an interview he gave that day to [[Democracy Now!]], Seeger sang "I Come and Stand at Every Door", as it was also the 68th anniversary of the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|bombing of Nagasaki]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Shows featuring Pete Seeger|url=http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/pete_seeger|work=Democracy Now!|access-date=September 20, 2013|archive-date=September 21, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921054448/http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/pete_seeger|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Pete Seeger & Onondaga Leader Oren Lyons on Fracking, Indigenous Struggles and Hiroshima Bombing|url=http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/8/9/pete_seeger_onondaga_leader_oren_lyons_on_fracking_indigenous_struggles_and_hiroshima_bombing|work=Democracy Now!|access-date=September 20, 2013|date=August 9, 2013|archive-date=September 21, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921054941/http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/8/9/pete_seeger_onondaga_leader_oren_lyons_on_fracking_indigenous_struggles_and_hiroshima_bombing|url-status=live}}</ref>

On September 21, 2013, Seeger performed at [[Farm Aid]] at the [[Saratoga Performing Arts Center]] in [[Saratoga Springs, New York]]. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, he sang "This Land Is Your Land",<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt9jWoXmrLw |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/mt9jWoXmrLw| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|title=Pete Seeger – This Land is Your Land (Live at Farm Aid 2013) |publisher=YouTube |date=September 21, 2013 |access-date=2013-12-05}}{{cbignore}}</ref> and included a verse he said he had written specifically for the Farm Aid concert.

==Personal life==
{{more citations needed|section|date = October 2023}}
In 1943, Seeger married [[Toshi Seeger|Toshi Aline Ohta]], whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi's death in July 2013.<ref name="wife">{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/arts/music/toshi-seeger-wife-of-folk-singing-legend-dies-at-91.html?_r=0 | title=Toshi Seeger, Wife of Folk-Singing Legend, Dies at 91 | work=[[The New York Times]] | date=July 12, 2013 | access-date=July 12, 2013 | author=Martin, Douglas | archive-date=August 21, 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170821090621/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/arts/music/toshi-seeger-wife-of-folk-singing-legend-dies-at-91.html?_r=0 | url-status=live }}</ref> Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months while Seeger was deployed overseas; Seeger never saw him.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=131}} They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), [[Mika Seeger|Mika]] (a potter and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren [[Tao Rodríguez-Seeger]] (a folk musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a psychotherapist), Moraya (a marriage and family therapist married to the former NFL player [[Chris DeGeare]]), Penny, and Isabelle, and great-grandchildren Dio and Gabel. Tao sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with the [[the Mammals|Mammals]]. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the 2007 [[PBS]] documentary ''[[Pete Seeger: The Power of Song]]''.

When asked by [[Beliefnet]] about his religious or spiritual beliefs, and his definition of God, Seeger replied:

{{Blockquote|text=Nobody knows for sure. But people undoubtedly get feelings which are not explainable and they feel they're talking to God or they're talking to their parents who are long dead. I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God. I've had preachers of the gospel, Presbyterians and Methodists, saying, "Pete, I feel that you are a very spiritual person". And maybe I am. I feel strongly that I'm trying to raise people's spirits to get together. ... I tell people I don't think God is an old white man with a long white beard and no navel; nor do I think God is an old black woman with white hair and no navel. But I think God is literally everything, because I don't believe that something can come out of nothing. And so there's always been something. Always is a long time.|<ref>{{cite web
|title=Pete Seeger's Session
|url=http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Music/2006/08/Pete-Seegers-Session.aspx?p=1
|publisher=Beliefnet, Inc.
|author=Wendy Schuman
|access-date=August 16, 2013
|archive-date=October 3, 2013
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131003070335/http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Music/2006/08/Pete-Seegers-Session.aspx?p=1
|url-status=live
}}</ref>
}}

He was a member of a [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian Universalist Church]] in New York.<ref>{{cite web |publisher=Unitarian Universalist Association |archive-date=2 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140702144833/http://www.uua.org/beliefs/history/6186.shtml |url=http://www.uua.org/beliefs/history/6186.shtml |title=Unitarian Universalist History – UUA |access-date=August 17, 2019}}</ref>

Seeger lived in [[Beacon, New York]]. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves. He remained engaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in the [[Hudson Valley]] region of New York throughout his life. For years during the [[Iraq War]], Seeger maintained a weekly protest vigil alongside Route 9 in [[Wappingers Falls]], near his home. He told a ''New York Times'' reporter that "working for peace was like adding sand to a basket on one side of a large scale, trying to tip it one way despite enormous weight on the opposite side." He went on to say, "Some of us try to add more sand by teaspoons ... It's leaking out as fast as it goes in and they're all laughing at us. But we're still getting people with teaspoons. I get letters from people saying, 'I'm still on the teaspoon brigade.'"<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/nyregion/22seeger.html|website=The New York Times|title=At a Roadside Vigil, an Iconic Voice of Protest|first=Dennis|last=Gaffney|date=June 22, 2008|access-date=December 30, 2021|archive-date=December 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211230174034/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/nyregion/22seeger.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013, at the age of 91,<ref name="wife"/><ref name=Wilkinson_article/> and Seeger died at [[NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital]] in New York City on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94.<ref name="NYTdeath">{{cite news |last=Pareles |first=Jon |date=January 28, 2014 |title=Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94 |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html |url-status=live |url-access=subscription |access-date=January 28, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150714022101/http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?_r=0 |archive-date=14 July 2015}}</ref>

==Legacy==
Response and reaction to Seeger's death quickly poured in. President [[Barack Obama]] noted that Seeger had been called "America's tuning fork"<ref>The phrase "America's tuning fork" is usually attributed to poet [[Carl Sandburg]], for example, see Corey Sandler, ''Henry Hudson: Dreams and Obsessions'' (New York: Kensington Books, 2007), p. 203. It is unclear when and where Sandburg, who thought highly of the Weavers, said this. Studs Terkel, who introduced Seeger as "America's tuning fork" at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival (see George Wein, Nate Chinen, ''Myself Among Others: A Life in Music'' [Da Capo Press, 2009], p. 314), later wrote that he had seen the phrase in ''[[DownBeat]]'' jazz magazine (see Terkel, ''Hope Dies Last: Keeping The Faith In Troubled Times'' [New York: The New Press], p. 249). The phrase was picked up in a [https://books.google.com/books?id=NEgEAAAAMBAJ&dq=Pete+Seeger+America%27s+tuning+fork&pg=PA61 photo spread on Seeger] in ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine, October 9, 1964, p. 61. See also Ronald D. Cohen, ''Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–70'' [University of Massachusetts Press, 1970], p. 223.</ref> and that he believed in "the power of song" to bring social change, "Over the years, Pete used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for workers' rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger."<ref>{{cite web|title=Obama memorializes Pete Seeger|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/01/28/obama-pete-seeger-bruce-springsteen/4958941/|work=USA Today|access-date=January 28, 2014|date=January 28, 2014|archive-date=March 8, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140308050438/http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/01/28/obama-pete-seeger-bruce-springsteen/4958941/|url-status=live}}</ref> Folksinger and fellow activist [[Billy Bragg]] wrote that "Pete believed that music could make a difference. Not change the world, he never claimed that – he once said that if music could change the world he'd only be making music – but he believed that while music didn't have agency, it did have the power to make a difference."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/28/pete-seeger-folk-singer-activist-music-make-difference|title=Pete Seeger: folk activist who believed music could make a difference|first=Billy|last=Bragg|date=January 28, 2014|website=The Guardian|access-date=December 12, 2016|archive-date=October 14, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161014121055/https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/28/pete-seeger-folk-singer-activist-music-make-difference|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Bruce Springsteen]] said of Seeger's death, "I lost a great friend and a great hero last night, Pete Seeger," before performing "We Shall Overcome" while on tour in South Africa.<ref>[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruce-springsteen-honors-pete-seeger-with-stirring-we-shall-overcome-20140129 Diane Vadino, "Bruce Springsteen Honors Pete Seeger With a Stirring 'We Shall Overcome] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170917075856/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruce-springsteen-honors-pete-seeger-with-stirring-we-shall-overcome-20140129 |date=September 17, 2017 }}," ''[[Rolling Stone]]'', January 29, 2014.</ref>

Not all responses to Seeger's passing were complimentary. [[Michael C. Moynihan|Michael Moynihan]] of ''[[The Daily Beast]]'' wrote an obituary entitled "The Death of 'Stalin's Songbird'" and included these remarks:{{blockquote|Along with countless other sensible people, I have often bristled at the mindless deification of Pete Seeger, the nonagenarian folk singer who died yesterday at age 94...we all remember good-but-overpraised songs like "If I Had a Hammer" and the treacly classic "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" But as the encomiums threaten to overwhelm, it's important to remember that Seeger, once an avowed Stalinist, was a political singer once devoted to a sinister political system—a position he held long after the Soviet experiment drenched itself in blood and collapsed in ignominy.<ref>{{cite web |last=Moynihan |first=Michael |website=The Daily Beast |date=29 January 2014 |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-death-of-stalins-songbird/ |title=The Death of 'Stalin's Songbird'}}</ref>}}

===Tributes===
{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | headerimage= | audio1 = [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/958461934 “Fresh Air with Terry Gross, January 28, 2014: Obituary for Pete Seeger"], [[Fresh Air with Terry Gross]]. Scroll down to 'View online' to hear the audio interview.}}

* A proposal was made in 2009 to name the [[Walkway Over the Hudson]] in his honor.<ref>[[Alan Chartock]], "New York has a chance to honor an American hero," ''Legislative Gazette'', April 24, 2009, found at [http://www.legislativegazette.com/Articles-c-2009-04-24-63866.113122_New_York_has_a_chance_to_honor_an_American_hero.html Legislative Gazette website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120802044042/http://www.legislativegazette.com/Articles-c-2009-04-24-63866.113122_New_York_has_a_chance_to_honor_an_American_hero.html |date=August 2, 2012 }}. Accessed April 29, 2009.</ref>
* A posthumous suggestion that Seeger's name be applied to the [[Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement|replacement Tappan Zee Bridge]] being built over the [[Hudson River]] was made by a local town supervisor.<ref name="upi.com"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20140128/pete-seeger-should-have-new-tappan-zee-bridge-named-for-him-downstate-politician-says|title=Pete Seeger should have new Tappan Zee Bridge named for him, downstate politician says|website=Dailyfreeman.com|date=January 28, 2014|access-date=January 29, 2014|archive-date=February 3, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203032132/http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20140128/pete-seeger-should-have-new-tappan-zee-bridge-named-for-him-downstate-politician-says|url-status=live}}</ref> Seeger's boat, the [[sloop]] ''[[Hudson River Sloop Clearwater|Clearwater]]'', is based at [[Beacon, New York]], just upriver from the bridge and frequently sails down to Manhattan to continuing spreading Seeger's message and music.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clearwater.org/|title=Clearwater|website=Clearwater.org|access-date=January 29, 2014|archive-date=October 2, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141002231745/http://www.clearwater.org/|url-status=live}}</ref>
* [[Oakwood Friends School]], located in Poughkeepsie New York, not far from Seeger's home, performed "[[Where Have All the Flowers Gone?]]" at one of their worship meetings. The collaboration was with three teachers (playing guitar and vocals) as well as a student harmonica player and a student vocalist.
* A free five-day memorial called Seeger Fest took place on July 17–21, 2014, featuring Judy Collins, Peter Yarrow, Harry Belafonte, Anti-Flag, Michael Glabicki of Rusted Root, Steve Earle, Holly Near, Fred Hellerman, Guy Davis, DJ Logic, Paul Winter Consort, Dar Williams, DJ Kool Herc, The Rappers Delight Experience, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, David Amram, Mike + Ruthy, Tom Chapin, James Maddock, The Chapin Sisters, Rebel Diaz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emma's Revolution, Toni Blackman, Kim & Reggie Harris, Magpie, Abrazos Orchestra, Nyraine, George Wein, The Vanaver Caravan, White Tiger Society, Lorre Wyatt, AKIR, Adira & Alana Amram, Aurora Barnes, The Owens Brothers, The Tony Lee Thomas Band, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, New York City Labor Chorus, Roland Moussa, Roots Revelators, Kristen Graves, Bob Reid, Hudson River Sloop Singers, Walkabout Clearwater Chorus, Betty & The Baby Boomers, Work O' The Weavers, Jacob Bernz * Sarah Armour, and Amanda Palmer.<ref>{{cite web|title=Folk singer, activist Pete Seeger dies in New York.|url=http://goodnewsplanet.com/five-day-seeger-fest-concert-memorial-pete-seeger-amanda-palmer-anti-flag-toni-blackman-tom-chapin-steve-earle-holly-near-rebel-diaz-paul-winter-consort-peter-yarrow-others-will-h/N|access-date=September 18, 2014|date=September 18, 2014|archive-date=February 2, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240202002317/https://goodnewsplanet.com/n-j-burkett-2015-new-york-emmy-awards-grammy-award-winner/|url-status=live}}</ref>
* In 2006, thirteen folk music songs made popular by Pete Seeger were reinterpreted by [[Bruce Springsteen]] on his fourteenth studio album, ''[[We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions]]''.
* In 2014, Wepecket Island Records recorded a Pete Seeger tribute album called [https://wepecket.ipower.com/WI026%20Notes.htm ''For Pete's Sake''].
* In 2020, [[Kronos Quartet]] released [[Long Time Passing]], an album of all new arrangements of Pete Seeger's music commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation and released on Smithsonian Folkways.
* On July 21, 2022, the United States Postal Service issued a Pete Seeger [[Non-denominated postage#Forever stamps|"Forever"]] stamp. The stamp is based on a photograph of Seeger playing a long neck banjo, taken by Seeger's son Daniel some time in the early 1960s. It's a commemorative in the Music Icons series, with a print quantity of 22,000,000.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/pete-seeger-stamps-S_580404|title=Pete Seeger Stamps|website=store.usps.com|access-date=September 21, 2022|archive-date=September 22, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922230227/https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/pete-seeger-stamps-S_580404/|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Awards===
Seeger received many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including:
* Induction into the [[Songwriters Hall of Fame]] (1972)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C76|title=Songwriters Hall of Fame – Pete Seeger Exhibit Home|year=1972|publisher=songwritershalloffame.org|access-date=January 28, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140209232609/http://songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C76|archive-date=February 9, 2014|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref>
* The [[Eugene V. Debs]] Award (1979)
* The [[Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award]] (1986)
* The [[Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award]] (1993)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/lifetime-awards |title=Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards |publisher=Grammy.org |access-date=August 28, 2012 |archive-date=July 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170703201633/https://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/awards/lifetime-awards |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* The [[National Medal of Arts]] from the [[National Endowment for the Arts]] (1994)
* [[Kennedy Center Honors|Kennedy Center Honor]] (1994)
* The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
* The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (1996)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://newsdesk.si.edu/about/awards|title=Awards and Medals: 1996|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|access-date=January 29, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170617144849/http://newsdesk.si.edu/about/awards|archive-date=June 17, 2017|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}</ref>
* Induction into the [[Rock and Roll Hall of Fame]] (1996)
* [[Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album]] of 1996 for his record ''Pete'' (1997)
* The Felix Varela Medal, [[Cuba]]'s highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999)
* The [[Schneider Family Book Award]] for his children's picture book ''The Deaf Musicians''. (2007)
* The [[Mid-Hudson Civic Center]] Hall of Fame (2008)- Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger's home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
* [[Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album]] of 2008 for his record ''At 89'' (2009)
* The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award<ref>[http://www.peaceabbey.org/cofc-award/award-recipients/ Courage of Conscience Award Winners] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140610041225/http://www.peaceabbey.org/cofc-award/award-recipients/ |date=June 10, 2014 }} Retrieved August 7, 2012.</ref> for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
* [[The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize]] (2009)
*[[Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children]] of 2010 for his record album ''Tomorrow's Children'' with the Rivertown Kids and Friends (2011)
* [[George Peabody Medal]] (2013)
* [[Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album]] of 2013 nomination for ''Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems'' (2014)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.peteseegerthestormking.com/|title=Pete Seeger: The Storm King Project|website=Peteseegerthestormking.com|access-date=January 29, 2014|archive-date=January 16, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140116003618/http://peteseegerthestormking.com/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.grammy.com/nominees?genre=32|title=56th Annual GRAMMY Awards Winners & Nominees: Best Spoken Word Album|date=January 2014|publisher=grammy.com|access-date=January 29, 2014|archive-date=January 30, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140130075903/http://www.grammy.com/nominees?genre=32|url-status=live}}</ref>
* [[Woody Guthrie]] Prize (2014) (inaugural recipient)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/02/22/pete-seeger-woody-guthrie-prize/5729229/|title=Pete Seeger gets a posthumous prize — and a sing-along|website=USA Today|access-date=2018-01-26|language=en|archive-date=January 27, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180127085532/https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2014/02/22/pete-seeger-woody-guthrie-prize/5729229/|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Selected discography==
{{Main|Pete Seeger discography}}
* ''[[American Folk Songs for Children]]'' (1953)
* ''Birds, Beasts, Bugs, and Little Fishes'' (1955)
* ''[[American Industrial Ballads]]'' (1956)
* ''[[American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2]]'' (1958)
* ''[[Gazette, Vol. 1]]'' (1958)
* ''[[Sleep-Time: Songs & Stories]]'' (1958)
* ''[[God Bless the Grass]]'' (1966)
* ''[[Dangerous Songs!?]]'' (1966)
* ''[[Rainbow Race]]'' (1973)
* ''[[American Folk Songs for Children]]'' (1990)
* ''[[At 89]]'' (2008)<ref name = discography1>{{cite web |url=http://www.discogs.com/artist/Pete+Seeger |title=Pete Seeger Discography |website=Discogs.com |date=May 3, 1919 |access-date=November 20, 2012 |archive-date=November 11, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121111075123/http://www.discogs.com/artist/Pete+Seeger |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=discography2>{{cite web |url=http://www.folkways.si.edu/searchresults.aspx?set=1&sPhrase=pete+seeger&sType='phrase' |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090424165012/http://www.folkways.si.edu/searchresults.aspx?set=1&sPhrase=Pete+Seeger&sType='phrase' |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 24, 2009 |title=Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways |website=Folkways.si.edu |access-date=November 20, 2012 }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[List of banjo players]]
* [[List of folk musicians#United States|List of folk musicians]]
* [[List of peace activists]]
* [[Tom Winslow]]&nbsp;– Clearwater singer and songwriter
* [[Union Boys]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*Dunaway, David K. ''How Can I Keep from Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger''. [McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990)] Revised Edition. New York: Villard Trade Paperback, 2008 {{ISBN|0-07-018150-0}}, {{ISBN|0-07-018151-9}}, {{ISBN|0-306-80399-2}}, {{ISBN|0-345-50608-1}}. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111128151019/http://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/5191201-david-dunaway Audio Version]
*Dunaway, David K. ''Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing''. three one-hour radio documentaries, Public Radio International, 2008
*Dunaway, David K. ''The Pete Seeger Discography.'' Scarecrow Press: Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.
*Forbes, Linda C. "Pete Seeger on Environmental Advocacy, Organizing, and Education in the Hudson River Valley: An Interview with the Folk Music Legend, Author and Storyteller, Political and Environmental Activist, and Grassroots Organizer." ''Organization & Environment'', 17, No. 4, 2004: pp.&nbsp;513–522.
*Gardner, Elysa. "Seeger: A 'Power' in music, politics." [[USA Today]], February 27, 2008. p.&nbsp;8D.
*Seeger, Pete. ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', New York: People's Songs, 1948. 3rd edition, New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. {{ISBN|0-8256-0024-3}}.
*{{cite book |last=Tick |first=Judith |title=Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1997}}
*Wilkinson, Alec. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/17/the-protest-singer "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music,"] ''[[The New Yorker]]'', April 9, 2006, pp.&nbsp;44–53.
*{{cite book |last=Wilkinson |first=Alec |title=The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger |location=New York |year=2009 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0307390981}}
*{{cite book |last=Winkler |first=Allan M. |title=To Everything There Is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford [Oxfordshire] |year=2009 }}

==Further reading==
* Briggs, John, ''Pete Seeger: The People's Singer'', Atombank Books, 2015, {{ISBN|0990516075}}
* "The Music Man" (profile and interview). In ''Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America'', text by Richard Klin, photos by Lily Prince, Leapfrog Press, 2011.
* Reich, Susanna, [http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stand-up-and-sing-9780802738127/ ''Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music and the Path to Justice''], Bloomsbury, 2017. {{ISBN|978-0802738127}}
* Renehan, Edward, [https://web.archive.org/web/20141223232731/http://newstreetcommunications.com/general_interest/pete_seeger_vs_the_un-americans ''Pete Seeger vs. the Un-Americans: A Tale of the Blacklist''], New Street Communications, LLC, 2014. {{ISBN|978-0615998138}}
* Seeger, Pete (Edited by Rob and Sam Rosenthal), [https://web.archive.org/web/20140203033622/http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=298790 ''Pete Seeger: In His Own Words''], Paradigm Publishers, 2012. {{ISBN|1612052185}}. {{ISBN|978-1612052182}}
* Seeger, Pete (edited by Ronald D. Cohen and James Capaldi), [http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-pete-seeger-reader-9780199862016;jsessionid=B0E432C11399552C64CC4781B362F5E0?cc=us&lang=en& ''The Pete Seeger Reader''], Oxford University Press, 2014. {{ISBN|9780199862016}}
* Seeger, Pete (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz), ''The Incompleat Folksinger'', New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. {{ISBN|0-671-20954-X}} ([https://web.archive.org/web/20110518082031/http://www.peteseeger.net/incompleatfolksinger.htm excerpts]) Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. {{ISBN|0-8032-9216-3}}.
*{{cite news|last=Zollo |first=Paul |title=Pete Seeger Reflects on His Legendary Songs |date=January 7, 2005 |publisher=GRAMMY Magazine |url=http://www.grammy.com/features/2005/0107_seeger.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051124051231/http://www.grammy.com/features/2005/0107_seeger.aspx |archive-date=November 24, 2005 }}

==External links==
{{sister project links|d=no|wikt=no|b=no|v=no|voy=no|species=no|n=no|s=no}}
<!-- Please do not link "Jim Capaldi" to the dead musician of the same name. They are not the same person! -->

* {{cite web|url=https://peteseeger.org/ |publisher=PeteSeeger.org |title=Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing? |author=David Dunaway (Seeger biographer and original site creator)}}
* {{cite web|author=Jim Capaldi (original site creator)|url=http://www.peteseeger.net/|website=peteseeger.net|title=Pete Seeger Appreciation Page|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121220030035/http://www.peteseeger.net/|archive-date=December 20, 2012|df=mdy-all}}
* {{cite web |last=Matthews |first=Scott |title=John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival |work=[[Southern Spaces]] |date=August 6, 2008 |url=https://southernspaces.org/2008/john-cohen-eastern-kentucky-documentary-expression-and-image-roscoe-halcomb-during-folk-revival/}}
* {{cite news|author=Pareles, Jon| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html |title=Obituary: Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94| work=The New York Times|date = January 28, 2014}}
* {{cite web|url=https://en.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/847604 |title=Peter Seeger b. 3 May 1919 d. 27 January 2014 – Full Tree|access-date=September 28, 2016|website=[[rodovid]]}}
* [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/pete-seeger-fbi-file "Pete Seeger's FBI File Reveals How the Folk Legend First Became a Target of the Feds"], ''Mother Jones'', 2015
* [https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/pete-seeger Pete Seeger Interview] at [[NAMM Oral History Program|NAMM Oral History Collection]]

{{Pete Seeger| state=expanded}}
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