Oh, we are getting some lovely Pete Seeger stories from you fine folks in response to our farewell post this morning; we got book recommendations ( How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger and Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singalong Memoir ) and stories and song requests. Here are a few of them!
Up top, sent by "The Grand Inquisitor," we have Pete in 1970 on the Johnny Cash Show, teaching the young fellow in black a thing or two about the folk song.
And how about a story, from reader "Justin":
My favorite Pete Seeger story comes from the documentary Power of Song. It's the 70's and Pete's living on the Hudson River, at the time one of the most polluted waterways in the country if not the world. Pete decides he wants to clean it so his plan is to build a 70 foot schooner to sail up and down the river. People will come, he imagines, to see the ship then notice how polluted the water is and be so delighted by the boat that they decide to band together to clean the river up.
It is such a naive and optimistic plan with no hope of ever succeeding in a real world of cynical, pragmatic people. But goddamnit if that wasn't exactly what happened. The Hudson is now a much cleaner river because of it.
Finally, if I may indulge in some sentimentality of my own, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" was the standard lullaby my dad sang me and is now what I sing to my own daughters. Make sure they grow up with a well developed sense of loss.
Have a Pete Seeger story? Emaildoktorzoom at wonkette dot comand we may just do another Moment of Pete later today.
Rest in peace, Pete.
I was lucky enough to see him twice in concert- and sing along- back in the 80&#039;s, and I treasure those memories. I grew up listening to my parent&#039;s LP of The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. My favorite is this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/wat..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_yumYPFm4">https://www.youtube.com/wat...