ABSTRACT
American folksinger and songwriter, born Peter R. Seeger in Patterson, New York. He was the son of musicologist Charles Louis Seeger. After two years at Harvard University he left academe to pursue a career playing banjo and singing folk music. He was in a group named the Almanac Singers in the early 1940s, and in 1949 joined the Weavers. He continued to perform solo as well, concentrating on songs of social content. As a composer, he had several successes, including “If I Had a Hammer,” “Kisses Sweeter than Wine,” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” During the 1950s, when Seeger was blacklisted due to alleged communist activities, he recorded primarily for the small Folkways label. During the folk-revival years, Seeger recorded for Columbia. He could not appear on network television until 1966, when the Smothers Brothers broke the tacit blacklist and invited him to sing his antiwar song “The Big Muddy”on their program. His record of “Little Boxes” (Columbia #42940; 1964) was a chart hit. An album, We Shall Overcome (Columbia CL #2101; 1964) was on the charts 18 weeks. He and Arlo Guthrie made a successful album in 1975: Together in Concert (Warner #2R 2214). Seeger also wrote a standard instruction manual for the five-string banjo, and edited several song collections. He continued to perform through the 1990s, although he has been less active in the past decade.
