Seeger among greatest of Americans

Pete Seeger turned 90 earlier this month.

I'm sure most of you have heard of him, at least in passing. He's a great American singer, songwriter and all-around pain to people in power. He wrote such classics as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "If I Had a Hammer" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (that last one with a little help from Ecclesiastes.

While there are certainly those who will disagree with me, I firmly believe that few people in the 20th century worked harder to help the poor, the disaffected and people of color than Seeger did and is still doing. Yes, he made the mistake of being a Communist in the 1930s and supporting the way Joseph Stalin was running Russia.

He later renounced those views and blamed himself for not looking deeper and trying to see the meaning behind the meaning.

Can you imagine very many modern politicians doing that?


He was a contemporary of the man regarded as the greatest of the folk singers, Woody Guthrie, and while Guthrie's guitar was inscribed with "This machine kills fascists," Seeger had an inscription of his own on his favorite banjo.

"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."

He was one of the leading musical voices in the civil rights movement and was actually the man who popularized the old Negro spiritual, "We Shall Overcome," as a civil rights anthem.

He even got the Smothers Brothers in trouble with CBS when he sang "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" in December 1967 to protest the Vietnam War.

In more recent years, his work has dealt more with the environment, and many of you doubtless saw him at the Obama inauguration when along with Bruce Springsteen and his own grandson, he performed Guthrie's wonderful anthem, "This Land is Your Land."



And wasn't it wonderful for Seeger to live long enough to see a black man elected president of the U.S.?

Godspeed, Pete. When you're gone, I doubt we will see your like again.