Seeger’s impact on music, culture shown in new bio

Carl Sandburg once referred to Pete Seeger as “America’s tuning fork.” He wasn’t far from the truth.

Pete Seeger, the musician, singer, songwriter, labor activist and environmentalist, was born in New York City in 1919. He studied for a brief time at Harvard but left school before graduating. In 1936, he heard a five-string banjo for the first time while attending a folk festival in North Carolina. It was an experience that would change his life.

In 1939, he landed a job with the Archives of American Folk Music in Washington, D.C. For the next two years he tracked down legendary folk and blues performers including Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and others who helped define American music of the 20th Century. His musical achievements were soon overshadowed by political controversy when he became one of the most blacklisted entertainers in history.

David King Dunaway, who teaches history and broadcasting at the University of New Mexico, first wrote his biography of Seeger in 1981. It was an instant bestseller and quickly became the definitive book about this resilient man.

His book has been updated and reissued with many never-before-seen photographs to coincide with Pete Seeger: Master of Song, a three-hour PBS broadcast, which aired last February and which Dunaway narrated.

Dunaway’s biography is fascinating and informative. He reveals for the first time the extent that FBI and CIA agents spied on folk artists throughout the 1940s and ‘50s. He also details Seeger’s involvement in the Communist Party.

Dunaway claims that Seeger shouldn’t be judged on his politics but rather by his performances, which spanned more than seven decades and touched millions of people worldwide. He adds that Seeger is an American treasure even though right-wing groups picketed the artist and even attempted to stone him on several occasions.

This is a well-balanced biography that serves up a compelling portrait of one of the most remarkable performers, composers and activists of our time. This is an extraordinary piece of writing that is crisply executed and backed by meticulous research.