Book Review: The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson

 Thanks to Carl Brookins for offering this review. This is a bit of a serendipitous occurrence considering just last night I revisited my love of the music of this era by performing some old Peter, Paul, and Mary songs at a Cabaret show, with two of my talented kids. I remember well the days of hootenannies, Seeger, Biaz, Dylan et al. What a fun time that was. And it was fun to go back in time last night, except most folks had never heard "Stewball."
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The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger
By Alec Wilkinson
Pub by Vintage Books, 2010,
ISBN: 978-0-307-39098-1
Trade Paper, 152 pages, including
credits, acknowledgments and testimony.

The mystery is that Pete Seeger survives and endures.  In his lifetime which spans much of the turmoil of the Twentieth Century, he has been beset by some of the most vicious and evil forces we have experienced in this country and in the world.  Yet, here he is, still pluckin’ and singin’ and taking on injustice and good causes, like cleaning up the Hudson River.

I suppose I’m biased.  I grew up in a time when folk singing in America was in the ascendancy and I have a lot of old records and memories of these folks, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, several others. I once had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Seeger through the good offices of my friend, another fine folk singer, Gene Bluestein.  So it was great to read about all those folks, many of whom it’s easy to think of as friends, whether personal or only through their music, through the sensibilities of Seeger and Wilkinson.

It is wonderful, although disturbing, to read this elegantly written, honest look at a man, his friends and companions, his family, his trials and his triumphs; a man who sang his way into the hearts and memories of a lot of people.  Seeger’s influence, not just in the music world; after all, the Weavers recording of  “Goodnight Irene” in 1950 sold over a million copies.

This slender book, written in the kind of engaging style that is somehow the essence of Seeger’s approach to a principled life, is a moving tribute to him and to everything that’s right in these United States.  Readers may disagree with his points of view, but you cannot disagree with the way Mr. Seeger fashioned his protest.  Wilkinson has set down, in a most engaging manner, for readers everywhere, the values and the reality of a true American.
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Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords

"Blowing in the Wind"

I just read on CNN news that one of my all-time favorite singers has died. Mary Travers, of the famed Peter, Paul, and Mary trio died from side effects of treatment from a bone-marrow transplant after battling leukemia.

The songs of Peter, Paul and Mary were as influential on the 60s and 70s as those of Pete Seeger, and called people to action as the civil rights and anti-war movements moved into full swing. In 1963, the trio performed its hit song "If I Had a Hammer" at the Washington march where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famed "I Have a Dream Speech."

That was a profound moment for me, and the idealist in me believed that if people only paid attention to what the songs were saying, we could end all the evils in society.

That was especially true of "Blowing in the Wind." How could a person listen to those lyrics and not want to change their ways? That song spoke to my soul in ways few other songs do, and I still count it as one of my favorites.

It was also one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar, and when I sing it now it still stirs my soul.

Recently I was listening to a CD of Peter, Paul, and Mary all-time hits, and I realized I know every song on the CD. I learned them all when we used to do Hootenannies at church.

For those young folks who read this a hootenanny is an informal performance by folk singers, typically with participation by the audience. )

Recently, I've idly thought about getting a hootenanny going at a venue here in my little corner of East Texas, and maybe this is the impetus to make it happen.

Rest in peace, dear Mary, your music will live on.



The singer was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in November 1936 and grew up in New York's Greenwich Village. As a teenager, she performed in a Broadway review, but stepped on to the folk music scene in the 1950s. She emerged as an iconic folk singer while performing with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey.

Peter, Paul and Mary came together while singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in Stookey's New York City apartment. They went on to play gigs at coffee houses and later on the radio.

"As a performer, her charisma was a barely contained nervous energy -- occasionally (and then only privately) revealed as stage fright," Stookey said.

Their music reflected the 1960s and the 1970s, a time of turmoil as the civil rights and anti-war movements moved into full swing.

Travers applied her recognition to rally behind those progressive movements. In 1963, the trio performed its hit song "If I Had a Hammer" at the Washington march where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famed "I Have a Dream Speech," her publicist said.