Rants & Raves - Letters

Each year the Folklore Program at my university chooses to honor someone for his or her significant work in Folklore Studies. In the spring of 2008, we honored Peggy Seeger for her outstanding contributions to the study, performance, and perpetuation of traditional music.

As Peggy's talents attest, the Seeger family must be what happens when nurture and nature collide in all the best ways. Peggy has written and sung an important place for herself in the history of American and British folk music.

She's justly famous for her music, but her intellect is equally impressive. And even better yet, hers is an intellect fueled by a good heart. At my university, she gave a stellar performance-lecture on the importance of traditional music in which she not only had the audience pondering her incisive comparisons and contrasts between folk and classical music but also had them singing along with her (of course!).

She's every bit as smart, articulate, and lovely off stage as on it, so it was a privilege to work with her in every venue, including the classroom. She provided one of those rare, sumptuous learning experiences that will be long recalled by our students and faculty.

I also have to say that seeing Peggy makes every woman want to do seventysomething just like she does it. Clearly, Peggy Seeger knows exactly what to do with all the beautiful and hard years of a life richly lived.

Dr. Jeannie Banks Thomas
Director
Folklore Program
Utah State University
Logan, UT

from Bob Bossin, Vancouver songwriter:

Bring Me Home arrived and it's wonderful. I love the way you sing those songs. You fit into them like you were dropping onto a much loved, perfectly comfortable couch. Often when I hear folk songs sung - real folk songs, i mean - there is something cross-cultural about it. The singer comes from his or her world (this world) and finds something in songs from that old world, and it is a fine thing. But to my ear, there is no disconnect between you and those songs. They are your world, and they sound like it. And of course they are, in your hands, musical as hell, but that is just the platform. They just sound so right. Bravo.
bb

Augusta Heritage, Vocal Week 2005
Elkins, West Virginia

Your energy and generosity and grand approach to music and life were among the highlights of Vocal Week this past August, for me and for the campers as well. The comments I got from your students while I was there, and the plaudits on the written evaluations, all reinforced what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears: you were a force of nature! Thanks for joining us for the 2005 Vocal Week, and for allowing me to hover on the edge of the songwriting class.Your full group presentation and your concert set also were very moving for a lot of people. Thanks in particular for those moments!

Flawn Williams

REGARDING YOUR BIRTHDAY CONCERT....

Dear Peg -
It was amazing to see you again - I am sure you get more beautiful as you get older. Last time we met was a Kirsty's house where I was working on building her cabinets in Ealing - was a couple of years before Ewan sadly passed away - seems like a long time ago now.

It was an amazing concert - I have never seen Pete Seeger before - what a guy - it was a joy to see him work the audience - and the last time I saw Mike was with you and Ewan in the Singers Club in the 60's I was about 17 then and your boys were very little.

I must say that I think you are are about the most authentic person I have ever seen on stage - you were just you - warm, intelligent, natural and funny - it was like sitting in your living room. Seems funny to even call it a concert.

I am in the process of constructing my web site www.crossfields.co.uk/leo-musician.htm and I talk about my music and you and your incredible generosity and kindness to me when I was 14 years old (1964). Please have a look.

You mean a lot to me and I truly believe that you fed my eagerness to learn music which has kept me playing and loving American old time music all my life.

I won't take up any more of your time but just wanted to say thank you for so much.

All my love,
Leo

A PERFECT MEMORIAL FOR ALL

Winn and I listened to Love Call Me Home on the way to Hot Springs this weekend. We both said at the end, after the title track, that if we die before you do, we would like you to sing that song for us at our funerals. If you die first we will have it played from the cd. Thank you for a new perfect memorial song for all times.
Totsie

FROM AN ENGLISH FRIEND

Dear Peggy,

hope you are having less trouble with your playing - you spoke of suffering badly from RSI, hope it's better after a rest. I have been bootlegging shamelessly in the hope of acquiring you a new fan base who will then come honest and order your records in an above board manner. At my son's wedding last weekend I met a great woman from Canada whose daughter is an engineer, but who, although being a fan of Pete Seeger, was unaware of your existence. I have spent the evening putting some of my favourite songs of yours on tape for her, and have been sobbing and laughing and singing by turns. so much of my life seems to have your voice in the background. I remember writing up the text of the song "My son" up for alex's coming of age, and also giving it to my friend from kindergarten days when his son married, years ago. I've been singing along with the greenham girls and the women's union tonight and grinning at the "different tunes", remembering with pleasure the odd lines I contributed and how many families now love that song. thank you for everything, over the years.

love, sheelagh

Bluegrass Unlimited
Oct. 2002 issue

In the May 2001 issue, we discussed the work of the late Carroll Best, an early "melodic" banjo stylist from North Carolina. We subsequently received these comments on the subject from a veteran banjoist and long time subscriber. For some reason,we failed to publish them at the time. We'd like to correct that oversite, albeit a year late.

"Your commentary on Carroll Best revived the old discussion of who really was the first banjoist to develop or record in this style. I have a theory which may surprise most BU readers. Has anyone out there listened to the music of Peggy Seeger? Like Pete Seeger, she always emphasized the song and the lyrics and, also like Pete, she has always been a fine and unheralded instrumentalist.

I have an obscure LP by Peggy on the Folk-Lyric label, FL 114, 'Peggy Seeger Sings and Plays American Folksongs for Banjo.' As we all know, the old vinyl LPs rarely had session or release dates on the jacket or the disc, which in this case is really a shame. Most of the record is devoted to ballads, on which Peggy plays a variety of effective styles.

Like the old Folkways albums, this one came with a lengthy expostulation by the artist on the back cover, including a put-down of "hillbilly banjoists" who play too fast and too loud plus a typed booklet inside with extensive details on tunings and playing styles.

But here's the point: on the last three bands she plays medleys (two each) of the fiddle tunes on the banjo. Included are The Devil's Dream, the Old Soldier (Red-Haired Boy) and several others. They may not be as slick and smooth as later versions by Bill Keith and others (Peggy played open-backed banjo and did not use picks) but all the notes are there, the entire melodies plus variations.

I acquired this record in the very early 1960s. The liner notes mention that Peggy Seeger settled in Britain in 1959 so that my best guess is that the session was 1960 or 1961. In any case, I'll wager that she developed this style entirely on her own in order to play fiddle tunes on her favourite instrument. Peggy never played and, I dare say never appreciated, bluegrass. But what a phenomenal banjoist!"

"Banjo Dan" Lindner, Montpelier, VT. Oct 2002

Dear Ms. Seeger:
I have emailed you before but thought I'd do so again at the risk of repeating myself. Firstly, I just wanted to thank you again for all the years of wonderful music that you have supplied to these grateful ears.

You, and Ewan MacColl, have been and remain amongst my very favourite songwriters. I credit you, in particular, with writing some of the first feminist songs I ever heard. really opened up my eyes via my ears.

I wanted also to relate a short story to you. I have amongst my lps, a copy of "The Angry Muse". From that I learned the song "Beans, Bacon and Gravy" Always liked that song. So when I formed an informal choir and we were invited to a local May Day celebration, I insisted that we sing that song. You see, May Day/Workers' Day is celebrated in the little village of Cumberland, British Columbia with a Bean Dinner.

This commemorates the Great Strike in the coal mines of Vancouver Island in the years 1912 - 1914. At one point, the federal government sent train-cars full of dried beans to feed the starving strikers. Of course, the skeptical among us will think that it was done in order to quell revolt rather than out of humanitarian feelings.

Anyway, we sang "Beans, Bacon & Gravy" last night and I thought of you and wanted to let you know once again how much all the things you have done have inspired, informed and strengthened me.

Thanks so much for all of it. I wish you all the very best.

Steve Harvey