There's a famous picture of Woody Guthrie where along the face of his guitar are clearly seen the words "This Machine Fights Fascists". That picture has long been part of the romantic image that's grown up among "folkies" about the guy who inspired Bob Dylan and wrote some of the most enduring songs of the twentieth century, songs that are sung to this day.
The legends haven't been as flamboyant about his old friend Pete Seeger, and for some reason he's never obtained the status of Woody among the left and the folkies even though he was as staunchly committed to all the same causes as Woody and has continued to be to this day, even though he's well into his 80s. Radical singer/songwriter Phil Ochs even took shots at Pete and his audiences in the 1960s with his song "Love Me, Love Me, I'm A Liberal"—"I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts/He sure gets me singing those songs."
Pete wouldn't contain himself to singing only about the cause, he would sing old spirituals, songs for children, and he was probably the first world music performer as he would also sing folk songs from all over the world. He also did the unforgivable in the eyes of so many—he and the band the Weavers had a hit. In the days before they were booted off the airwaves as part of the blacklisting of the 1950s ( Pete had been a member of the Communist Party of America until 1950 when he quit in disgust) they achieved a high level of popularity for their performances of American and world folk songs.
But for all his supposed mainstream acceptance, Pete was blacklisted along with hundreds of other artists whose patriotism was questioned by the American government via the infamous hearings of Joseph McCarthy into un-American activities. Pete's banjo may not have had fighting words on it, but what it did say - "This sound surrounds hate and forces it to surrender" - said all that needed to be said about the man and his music.
Pete came by his appreciation for American folk music via his family, as his father was a folklorist and a music teacher. He was born in New York City in 1919 and even though his family was musically inclined and he himself started playing ukulele at five, he didn't consider a career in music until 1936, when he first heard a five-string banjo. At twenty-five he dropped out of his life of journalism and Harvard University and embarked on the path he continues to follow today.
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