Bruce Springsteen said Pete Seeger was “like your granddad if your granddad could kick your ass”

By Stephen Pate – Bruce Springsteen, at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday,  gives an eloquent summary of Pete Seeger’s significance to America.

What we have today in music is owed to the courage and Yankee stubbornness of one man – Peter Seeger.

Seeger was a friend of Woody Guthrie one of the great protest and folk singers.  Branded a communist for his socialist, people centered music, Seeger couldn’t find work in the 50’s. Maybe he was a communist: who cares? Seeger was a genuine patriotic American who saved a part of its culture.

Bruce Springsteen on Pete Seegers birthday

Both to earn an income and to slake his thirst for singing, Seeger hit the college tour. Actually, he went from college to college busking for change.

Eventually it became the college circuit for Seeger. In coffee shops, student union buildings an in recital halls, Pete Seeger sang the American folk song including those great Woody Guthrie protest songs.

Bruce Springsteen introduces Pete Seeger on Seeger’s 90th birthday

During the hey day of rock and roll, when jazz was cool, Peter Seeger seeded and fed the folk music fad starting with the universities. By then Guthrie was silenced with Huntington’s disease. Only a few major labels released folk songs.

Pete Seeger on Young vs Old Album (photo scalatti2004 )

Seeger sang songs against for little people and against big business, against consumerism, racism, discrimination, subjugation of foreign countries for US commercial interests.

Seeger stood up for right and denounced evil.

Pete Seeger didn’t write “We Shall Overcome” He published it and sang it so many times it became the anthem of the civil rights movement.

It’s very unlikely there would have been a folk music boom without Seeger’s decade in the wilderness. There would have been a different Bob Dylan, if one at all. The singer songwriter style of music would likely not exist.

Just in case you missed it, I grew up believing in human rights because I listened to Pete Seeger along with tens of millions of other people. The guy is still going strong.

Every time someone tells me off for speaking out I think of Pete Seeger. I will not quit because someday we shall overcome. We’re a lot closer to that day than we were 50 years ago.

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