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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 38,323
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarah_Jayne
You know what they say about one man's treasure?
He was a national treasure whether or not there were those who wished to tarnish his worth. Between him and Woody Guthrie, they wrote so many American folk songs that most people around today think have pretty much always been around.
He wrote Where Have All The Flowers Gone, If I Had A Hammer and Turn! Turn! Turn! . All of which I was taught to sing in either school, girl scouts or church as a child as if they were American standards.
So, screw the blacklisters, he was treasure.
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I based my statement on the contributions Pete Seeger made to American culture.
Quote:
Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including:
Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1972)
The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)
The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
Kennedy Center Honor (1994)
The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (1996)[109]
Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record Pete (1997)
The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999)
The Schneider Family Book Award for his children's picture book The Deaf Musicians. (2007)
The Mid-Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)- Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger's home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 2008 for his record At 89 (2009)
The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
A proposal to name the Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)
Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children of 2010 for his record Tomorrow's Children, Pete Seeger and the Rivertown Kids and Friends (2011)
George Peabody Medal (2013)
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album of 2013 nomination for Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems (2014)
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An article from 20 years ago:
Quote:
America?s best-loved commie; Even a radical can become a national treasure. Just ask Pete Seeger.
Here, in Pete Seeger?s warm nest deep in the woods above the Hudson River, you can find the Seeger you require.
If you grew up on Woody Guthrie, sang along with and without Mitch Miller, subjected your kids to ?Tzena, Tzena? till they sought sanctuary in the Rolling Stones, here?s your Pete:
Lanky and strong at 75, he bounds up a muddy hillside, splits logs, tells tales about cleaning up his river. He looks up from his Granny Smith apple and suddenly those clear, rich pipes open up: ?You know, there?s a song about that ... .?
Or: Pete could be your kindly grandfather. He?s a scratchy voice joyfully singing children?s songs, ?The Foolish Frog? and ?Creepy Crawly Little Mousie,? ?One Grain of Sand? and ?Abiyoyo.? The phone rings and it?s Tao, Seeger?s grandson and partner in song. The old man lights up. Tao is Pete?s disciple and successor, satisfying the old storyteller?s craving for an audience that will remember and recite.
Or: You can?t stand this man, once the subject of a New York Times story under the headline ?Seeger Sings Anti-American Song in Moscow.? That he could be seen as an American hero galls you. The man is a pinko. Comforted the enemy. Sowed the seeds of social discord. Undermined authority, belittled respect. Here in the upstairs corner he calls his office, Seeger?s still doing it, sifting through the ?little socialist newsletters? he depends on for ideas and insights.
A few days before the president of the United States is to honor him with a toast and a medal, Pete Seeger is at his kitchen table, eating good brown bread made in his wife?s new computerized breadmaker, sitting under light provided by the profitmongers at Con Edison, and the man proudly says, ?I am still a communist.?
Whatever you think of Seeger, you?d be hard pressed to imagine him in a tuxedo, wearing a Kennedy Center Honors medal, chatting up Bill Clinton in the Presidential Box of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, bowing to an audience of swells who shelled out up to $5,000 a ticket for tonight?s show.
Back home, Seeger wears what you?d expect: a floral print shirt over a political T-shirt, brown boots and jeans so blue you remember that once upon a time you had to fade them yourself. A red bandanna peeks out his back pocket, and he uses it to wipe an apple seed from his chin.
?I use my father?s tuxedo,? Seeger says, ?which was made in 1922. I only had to let it out a couple of inches.?
Seeger doesn?t like all these accolades that arrive in the twilight of a life well spent. No, scratch that: The accolades are okay, he just doesn?t like being singled out for praise. He?s given to saying ?I?m not important? or ?I?m nobody, just a cog in a wheel.?
?I?m ambivalent about almost everything in the world,? he says. Fame perhaps most of all. Seeger has known fame; he is the first folk singer to be honored by the Kennedy Center, in part because many years ago, his songs sat atop the charts. Hard to believe: a Top 40 folkie.
But fame has been warped by technology, Seeger says. Once, well-known and known could mean the same thing. A storyteller was known, and known well, in his own village. Now, a musician with a hit achieves celebrity across the land, but he is known as a person only by those close to him.
Toshi, Seeger?s wife of 51 years, can listen to only so much of this. She rolls her eyes and zings Pete. ?He loves the attention,? she says. ?And he used to own three tuxedos. The Weavers sang in tuxedos? back in the early ?50s, when Seeger and Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman became the unlikeliest of pop stars. Their ?Goodnight Irene? - a waltz sung by lefty folkies - was inescapable in the summer of 1950.
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