Pete’s Word

The following from my Albuquerque friend, Wayne Shrubsall:

MIKE SEEGER

Wayne Shrubsall . . . Indiana born and bred, I became interested in Southern music via pop folk in 1959; from the Kingston Trio, I began listening to the Weavers, and then to Pete Seeger (though I was not as far left as he) and Erik Darling (though I was not as far right as he). But in 1964, while a student at Ball State University, I attended a concert at Earlham University in Richmond. I had been there in 1962 to hear Joan Baez, then in 1963 to hear Pete Seeger. The New Lost City Ramblers were the draw in 1964. In a way, these concerts signaled a progressive desire I was developing for music closer to what is now referred to as folk music.

The performers at Earlham appeared in a large auditorium, but we sat on the floor about four feet from the Ramblers, as we had for the Pete Seeger concert a year earlier. The Ramblers were introduced and took the stage. There were John Cohen on stage left, playing guitar and loudly tapping time with his right foot; Mike Seeger in the middle, playing fiddle; and Tracy Schwarz, having replaced Tom Paley, playing second guitar. In fact, they all beat time with their feet, and they tapped in perfect unison. They stood in a semi-circle, used one mike, and looked right at the audience with no affectation I could discern. Of course, their instrumentation changed throughout the performance, which appealed to me too.

Their first number, “Three Men Went a-Hunting,” snapped me to attention. This was not “MTA” in a frat-boy format, not “Barbara Allen” in a rich soprano art-song voice, not “We Shall Overcome” sung with revolutionary sincerity to white folks at a Quaker college. This was music that followed a tradition Indiana folks did not often hear. Then they did a variety of pieces they had recorded over the previous six years, including odd (for my whitebread sensibility at the time) pieces using musical modes I did not know existed.

After I was infatuated by their music, it was a short step to Mike’s involvement with bluegrass, and discovering the Country Gentlemen album Mike Seeger helped produce, and hearing the Strange Creek Singers, and seeing Mike as a soloist at festivals where I appeared with Peter Feldmann as the Old Time Band on the West Coast. At the San Diego Normal Heights folk festival around 1997, I heard Mike do his version of Tom Ashley’s “Walking Boss,” still one of my favorites; Mike played it on a low-tuned gourd banjo.

Mike and I chatted now and then; he came to John Cohen’s son’s wedding here in Albuquerque, and we played a bit at the wedding reception. Then the Ramblers appeared at the Santa Fe Folk Festival a few years ago, and they were still in fine form, blowing the audience away with a re-worked “Three Men Went a-Hunting.” Mike was ill then, but how ill I did not know.

The interesting thing was that they did not heavily politicize music; they just played it, to let it make its own point, whatever the point might be. After the Earlham concert, I asked them if they had much to do with “protest” songs. John and Mike replied simply that because they had other interests musically, they left protest stuff alone. In an era, the 1960s when I came of age, where that Marxist-oriented Popular Front music was a growing political force, it was a truly refreshing response.

Old-timey and bluegrass AND folksong collecting owe much to Mike and John and Tracy. When the Ramblers played old-timey and bluegrass, it was “right” only because it employed Southern traditions as well as anyone NOT a Southerner could. Their collecting saved traditions nearly lost in the industrial age. Best of all, their music saved me from a life of boundaries, boundaries as narrow as Indiana.

After a long struggle with cancer, Mike Seeger died peacefully last Friday, August 7th, in his Lexington, Virginia home, surrounded by his wife, family, and friends.

Mike Seeger with John Cohen, 1963 (Peter Feldmann photo)

Best known perhaps for his role as co-founder of the music group The New Lost City Ramblers, Mike devoted his life and career to performing, collecting, teaching, and disseminating the music of rural Appalachian America to a vast throng of friends, students, and admirers. Born in NYC in 1933 to Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Mike grew up in Washington DC and its suburbs. Along with the Lomaxes, the Seegers could be considered among the first families of the American folk music revival. His father, Charles, beginning his career as a musicologist, once recounted that he’d tired of studying European classical music, as he realized that this segment comprised just a small amount of the world’s musical output. Shifting his attention to folk and ethnic musics from around the world, his studies formed the basis of what we now call ethnomusicology. Mike’s mother, Ruth, was an accomplished pianist and music arranger, transcribing the field recordings of such collecting luminaries as John and Alan Lomax for publication via the Library of Congress.

Mike spent long hours listening to constant repetitions of collected folk songs that his mother was compiling for publication, many from fragile aluminum discs that were used by the field collectors of that day. He began playing guitar, banjo, and fiddle for himself, and soon added mandolin, spoons, harmonica (or mouth-harp), quills (panpipes), autoharp and other instruments to his arsenal of musical tools. He developed his own, unique singing style, and could turn a phrase in an ancient Elizabethan ballad as well as any of the traditional mountain singers he studied. His innate musicianship was professionally honed at Julliard in New York City, where he was introduced to many musical concepts that served him well throughout his life. Learning the techniques of sound recording at a nearby radio station, Mike soon took off with his own recorder and microphones to collect songs on his own at early country music festivals, in hillbilly bars and clubs, and along secluded roads and trails winding through the mountains of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and West Virginia.

To understand the contribution that Mike and his collaborators in the New Lost City Ramblers, (John Cohen, Tom Paley, and Tracy Schwarz) made to the traditional music community, one needs to understand the situation in the USA in 1958, the year the Ramblers were founded. In general, folk songs were generally regarded as quaint, sometimes beautiful, but backward relics of an agricultural past; something to be sung to children at bedtime, perhaps, or something to be “improved” and “beautified” in a classical setting by such artists as Richard Dyer Bennet, John Dowland, et al, in a manner similar to the German lieder or French art songs. Some attempts at popularizing such music were made by groups such as the Weavers and the Kingston Trio, but no one had attempted to perform the music in a concert setting in its native, traditional styles. Mike’s father, Charles, was one of the pioneers of the idea of studying traditional musics by performance, but generally applied this concept to ethnic music outside US borders. The Ramblers changed all this with their efforts to study and perform the music as it was originally played by their folk sources, whether early field or commercial 78 RPM recordings, or the country artists themselves. Making trips out into the countryside, they discovered that many musicians who had recorded some of the classic pieces of string band music for record companies in the 1920s and 30s were still alive and picking! Not only did Mike and the others study and document their musicianship, but they invited these performers for visits to the cities up North and out West for joint performances with their group. A support group, The Friends Of Old Time Music, was set up in New York by Mike, John, and their friend Ralph Rinzler, who were soon bringing performers such as Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs, and Elizabeth Cotton to the Big Apple for concerts. While re-discovering the talents of veteran performer Tom Ashley, the group was pleasantly surprised to find a young guitar player named Arthel “Doc” Watson, who was quickly enrolled in a band with Ashley and others for shows in NY. Mike and the Ramblers also began road trips across the country, performing in clubs, coffee houses, and college campuses. Interest in the more traditional-sounding music picked up dramatically, fueled in large part by the NCLR’s efforts. Meeting Ed Pearl in Los Angeles, they quickly assumed the role of music advisers to his Hollywood club The Ash Grove, sending a wealth of traditional performers out West, often for month-long forays to LA, Berkeley, Seattle, and other music centers.

Back in New York City, Mike and the Ramblers soon forged a working relationship with Moses Asch, owner of Folkways Records. The result: a stream of dozens of wonderful recordings by the Ramblers themselves, and of field recordings made by a huge spectrum of traditional performers from around the country. The records were made even more valuable and influential because of the voluminous liner notes and photographs accompanying the discs to annotate the music, setting the history and context in which the songs were made and performed. Such writing was very scarce at the time, and liner notes provided an important beginning to the serious study of such music. Producing the late 1950s album Mountain Music, Bluegrass Style, Mike was one of the first to apply the term “bluegrass” to describe the music created by Kentuckian Bill Monroe, and to draw attention to the fact that other bands were beginning to emulate that driving, jazz/blues-influenced mountain sound. His recorded output amounted to well over eighty LPs and CDs, divided among NLCR albums, those produced with other groups, such as The Strange Creek Singers, solo projects, and albums documenting a variety of folk and hillbilly music from banjo styles to dance steps. Mike, along with his friends like Ralph Rinzler and former wife Alice Gerrard, was instrumental via the Newport Folk Foundation, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and other organizations in bringing the music of Bill Monroe, Maybelle Carter, Cousin Emmy, and many other country, blues, and Cajun performers to the attention of urban audiences via festivals, folk clubs, and college concerts. His work with the New Lost City Ramblers spanned a period of fifty years and included performances around the globe from Europe to Asia.

The New Lost City Ramblers, 1964  (Peter Feldmann photo)

Perhaps most importantly, Mike simply radiated music. His enthusiasm for, love of, and expertise with traditional forms of American folk music created friends and fans wherever he went. His performances were deceptively simple, masterful, charming, and haunting, all at once. The music was always first with Mike, and his example will shine in the memories of all who met, watched, and knew him. He personified the line from an early Carter Family recording: “You may forget the singer, but don’t forget the song”.

He is survived by his wife, Alexia Smith; three sons by his first marriage to Marge Ostrow: Kim, Chris Arley, and Jeremy; four step-children with Alice Gerrard: Cory, Jenny, Joel, and Jesse; his sisters Peggy and Barbara; and his half-brothers Pete and John.

May you rest in peace, my friend.

- Peter Feldmann
Los Olivos, California
August, 2009.

I just returned from a weekend at UCLA, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ash Grove, a seminal music club in Hollywood. The LA Times has had several related articles, and I’m sure more information will be released over the next month. While there, I moderated a workshop titled “Hillbilly Fever”, on the Ash Grove and its very considerable influence on old time, folk, and bluegrass music in Southern California. We invited Mike Seeger, Tom and Patrick Sauber, Herb Peterson, Phil Borof, LeRoy McNees, and Roland White to come play and talk about their Ash Grove memories. I also hosted a bluegrass jam session with a lot of LA pickers and guest Roland White, former leader of the Kentucky Colonels.

Peter with Roland White and LeRoy McNees of the Kentucky Colonels. Photos by my friend Rita Weill Byxbe.

From today’s edition of Wired (a digital news site):

“Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

“In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea’s chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that’s shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.”

——-
Piracy of music recordings is a huge problem for musicians and record labels. As a musician and a label owner, I am certainly aware of that. No one knows the final outcome of the current fiasco, but past and current efforts of the large corporations in the industry, beginning with the absurd Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the multi-thousand dollar lawsuits of individual file sharers, and other repressive actions have only made matters worse.  This new proposal plans to tax internet service providers a suggested fee of $5 / month per user!  The resultant money – millions of dollars per month – to be divided among the corporate music entities by formulas sinmilar to what ASCAP, BMI, etc. now use to divide royalty payments.

Now, this proposed surcharge would not apply only to those who belong to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, but to all internet users.  Griffin and cohorts claim that 20% of internet users illegally download music files.  So here we have a double-whammy:  most of us do not illegally download music files, yet we would be forced to pay a minimum of $60 a year in fees to cover the supposedly “lost” royalties to the music inductry giants.  At the same time, those of us who attempt to make a living in the music business as small independent artists and labels will, as usual, not see a dime of the surcharge money, since it is the big cats who will be in charge of the distribution.

I would urge anyone affected by this outrageous proposal to keep close track of developments in the next few weeks. This seems just another bold agttempt by the big corporations to rope off music income to themselves.

I hope most of you got a chance to view the PBS American Masters showing of the new bio on Pete Seeger.  It was pretty nice, with glimpses into several facets of Pete’s musical career.  It also contained some rare video footage of old friends of mine, including Fred McDowell

(from Como, Mississippi) and Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers from St. Simon’s Island, Georgia.  If you missed it, watch for re-runs or take the time to rent the DVD, it’s highly recomended.

The first time I met Pete, I was living in Chicago and working at the Field Museum of Natural History – sort of nice going to a job in a Roman Temple located right on the lakefront.  By lucky accident, I had run into an old friend of Pete’s from WW II army days, Robert Parrish and his wife Dorothea, who had a house on Chicago’s north side near my one-room apartment.  Bob was a writer and magician, working with Pete entertaining the troops.  It was in the fall of 1961 that Bob, Dorothea, and I went to a concert billed as a Seeger family reunion, which included Pete, Penny, Peggy and Mike Seeger.  I still remember a night of great music, and being able to talk to Pete afterwards.  It was the Parrishes that told me about the newly-formed Old Town School of Folk Music which apparently is still going strong.  Music is about connections. . .

[Robert Parrish, writer and magician]

Two years later, I again encountered Pete at a folk festival at UC Berkeley, where he condicted workshops and was part of a show at that campus’ Greek Theater. Lots of fine music.

[Pete Seeger at the Greek Theater, Berkeley]

New at the Library of Congress

Announcing the American Folklife Center Online Card Catalog Covering
Field Recordings 1930 to 1950

“Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog ”

The Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center (AFC) announces the release of its online card catalog.. This tool will enhance access to the most heavily used recordings in the American Folklife Center*s collections — field recordings made primarily in the 1930s and 40s. It will be available on the Library of Congress web site starting on November 1, 2007. This new resource, entitled Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog, will provide researchers the convenience of accessing AFC *s card catalog without traveling to the Library. It contains fully searchable bibliographic data representing approximately 34,000 ethnographic sound recordings in the AFC Archive.  Included among these are the seminal field recordings associated with John A. Lomax*s and Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress collecting work (e.g., Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton), and countless other treasures recorded by collectors such as Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Henrietta Yurchenco, Vance andolph, and Helen Creighton. The new catalog will be part of the site The Library of Congress Presents Music, Theatre & Dance. The web address is:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/afccards/

AFC*s card catalog was originally created by Work Progress Administration (WPA) workers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and continued later by Archive of Folk Song (now AFC) staff. although these cards represent only 5 to 10 % of the AFC*s total holdings, the card catalog*s great advantage is that it provides access at the level of the individual track on the recording, and sometimes, added notes about that item. It provides the public with access to the thousands of individual songs, tunes, folk tales, sermons, monologues, and life stories in the Archive’s collections. The majority of the audio recordings listed in the catalog are instantaneous disc recordings, made on lacquer and aluminum discs, with the addition of a few early tape
recordings.

In addition to providing images of each card in the original catalog, and a searchable database of the text on the cards, the web resource eventually will include sound files for some of the items listed in the catalog. AFC has also digitized its collection of approximately 1,500 transcribed song lyrics, and the images of these transcriptions will be associated with their corresponding card catalog records. In this way, AFC staff can continue to expand the usefulness of the catalog as more collection materials become available online.

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to “preserve and present American folklife” through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs, and training. The Center includes the Archive of the AFC, which was established in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

Questions about this resource may be sent to the American Folklife Center’s reference email address: folklife@loc.gov Queries sent to this address will be forwarded to the appropriate folklife specialist.

Posted by:
Stephanie A. Hall
Librarian: Automated Reference Specialist
American Folklife Center http://www.loc.gov/folklife
Library of Congress shal@loc.gov

I’ve been spending a lot of time going over this wonderful book, just released this week. Matter of fact, Neil Rosenberg just informed me I got a copy a day before he did! (Of course, he lives in Newfoundland … ).

Based on an earlier work, “Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys – An Illustrated Discography” (1974)
by Mr. Rosenberg (this is a rare book, as it was never reprinted from its original small >2,000 copy initial run. Note the dog-eared condition of my copy), this new volume contains a complete discography of all of Bill’s commercial recordings and videos too. They are listed by session in chronological order, so it’s easy to trace Monroe’s musical evolution (or should we say “creativity” ?) through the years up to his death. Session dates, band listings, recording locations, master and release numbers . . . all are here for study and reflection. Add to this discographical listing a step by step musical analysis of every song recorded by Monroe, compiled by the late country music historian Charles K. Wolfe, and you have a volume that any serious fan of bluegrass music must add to his collection.

CLICK HERE for larger photo

CLICK HERE for further information and to order a copy ($35).

Although Grey Cat On The Tennessee Farm (HC-504), our salute to the music of Uncle Dave Macon is more than two years old, it is still making new friends. Grey Cat was recently reviewed by Al Shusterman of Backroads Bluegrass, which airs weekly in Sacramento, California on KCBL-FM.

[CLICK HERE] to read the full review… and thanks, Al!