Tag Archives: Pete Seeger

My father’s LP collection: folk songs, train songs, civil rights songs, Russian songs, and a bunch of political nerdery.

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[Cross-posted at Peter C. Robertson Archive.]

My father couldn’t carry a tune with a forklift, but boy did he love to sing. I have hilarious memories of him encouraging us to sing in the car, with the result that he and I would belt out “Roll On Columbia” together while my more musically-astute mother and brother cringed in their respective seats. After Dad passed in 1997, I got his collection of LPs, which I stored and moved and lugged around thinking I’d transfer them to digital media someday. Of course not. This year, I gave them to the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition where they will feature in future fundraising efforts — stay tuned! Before sending them along, I took photos of some of the most memorable, most Dad-resonant, of the covers.

His collection consisted of folk songs; political songs (big overlap with folk songs); train songs; spirituals; historical songs; historical speeches and voices; comedy (I swear to God we had George Carlin’s Seven Words on LP but I couldn’t find it); two children’s records; and a number of records in Russian including Paul Robeson and the Red Army Chorus.

Note: All of the images below have alt text describing both the images and text on the pictured LP covers.

Folk Songs & Political Songs starting with his all-time favorite singer, Pete Seeger. Note that the Darling Corey album was so old he was called Peter Seeger.

Darling Corey. Peter Seeger picking the five-string banjo and singing John Riley, Risselty-Rosselty, Devilish Mary, Come All Fair Maids, East Virginia Blues, I Had a Wife, Skillet Good and Greasy, Darling Cory, My Blue-Eyed Gal, Cripple Creek, Old Joe Clack, Ida Red, Jam on Jerry's Rocks, Penny's Farm, Danville Girl, Get Along Little Dogies. Sketch of white man with dark hair playing the banjo.
Folk Songs and Ballads: A Pete Seeger Concert. Notes by Kenneth S. Goldstein.
Pete Seeger Sings American Ballads. Folkways Records FA 2319. Image: Seeger (white man; dark hair) playing a banjo.
Pete Seeger Sings and Answers Questions at the Ford Hall Forum Boston Massachusetts. side one: Opinions and Social Justice, Background to Social Songs in Europe and the USA, Social Songs from the Colonial Times to today, Songs of the Immigrants; Side two: Labor Songs in the USA, Songs of Prejudices and Protests, Black Revolts in the USA; Side Three: Question and Answer Period, Anti-Vietnam Songs, The Big Muddy Controversy: TV, Arts in a Changing Society, Violence and Protest; Side Four: Lisa Kalvalege Song, Union Labor Songs, Bells of Rhymney, Woody Guthrie, Afro-American Songs
Images: seated crowds, one outdoors; one indoors. Text: Sing Out! Hootenanny with Pete Seeger and the Hooteneers. Folkways Records FN 2513.
Image: ten or so men (white and black) singing; one is playing a guitar. Text We Shall Overcome. Pete Seeger. Recorded Live at His Historic Carnegie Hall Concert. June 8, 1963
The Pete Seeger Sampler. Image: sampler-style needlepoint spelling out the alphabet and similar designs
Gazette Vol. 2. Songs by Pete Seeger. A Collection of Topical Songs, Old and New without Direction as to Content or Pressure.

Political/topical songs:

Talking Union & other Union Songs. The original with the Almanac Singers with Pete Seeger and Chorus. Image: sketch of four people.
"Negro Prison Songs. Mississippi State Penitentiary. work songs and blues recorded, edited, and annotated by Alan Lomax. Image: stylized prison building with horizontal and vertical bars.
The March on Washington. August 28th, 1963. We Shall Overcome! AUTHORIZED RECORDING PRODUCED BY THE COUNCIL FOR UNITED CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERSHIP. In order of appearance Joan Baez. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Anderson, Odetta, Rabbi Joachim Prinz. Bob Dylan, Whitney M. Young, Jr., John Lewis, Roy Wilkins, Walter Reuther, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph.
Image: vertical close up of a gun with a bayonet. Text: Songs of the Lincoln Brigade.

Train songs:

Image: stylized sketches of trains, engineers, and passengers. Text: A Golden Treasury of Train Songs.
Photos of trains. Text: 900 Miles and other R.R. Songs. Sung by Cisco Houston With Guitar. 900 Miles. Getting Up’ Holler. The Roamer. Wreck of the ‘97. Hobo Bill. The Great American Bum. The Brave Engineer. The Gambler. The Rambler. R.R. Bill. Worried Man Blues. Folkways Records & Service Corp., N. Y.

Paul Robeson, in English and Russian

Image: black man wearing suit and bow tie, mouth open singing. Text: The Essential Paul Robeson.
Image: close up of a Black man wearing a suit and bow tie. Text: Robeson
Image: sketch of a church with an angel flying above it. Text: Robeson Spirituals.
Spirituals and A Robeson Recital of Popular Favorites (arranged by Norman Lockwood) Paul Robeson, Baritone, with piano and vocal accompaniments by Lawrence Brown, and with the COLUMBIA CONCERT ORCHESTRA conducted by EMANUEL BALABAN. Go Down Moses, Balm In Gilead, By An' By, Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, John Henry, Water Boy, Nobody Knows De Trouble I've Seen, Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho, Ol' Man River, It Ain't Necessarily So, I Still Suits Me, Sylvia, Ma Curly-Headed Babby, Wagon Wheels, Mah Lindy Lou, The House I Live In.

And

Image: American flag in red and black. Text: The Broadside Singers. A GROUP OF NINE WRITERS WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO BROADSIDE MAGAZINE. AIN'T THAT NEWS / MORE GOOD MEN GOIN' DOWN / TIMES I’VE HAD / PATHS OF VICTORY / CHRISTINE / RATTLESNAKE / CARRY IT ON / LINKS ON THE CHAIN / CAUSES / IMMIGRANTS / THE FAUCETS ARE DRIPPING / FATHER'S GRAVE / THE SCRUGGS PICKER / PLAINS OF NEBRASKY-O / FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE
Odetta at the Gate of Horn. Image: Black woman in profile with her eyes closed.
Photo of a white man with dark hair wearing a white t-shirt holding a guitar over his shoulder. Text: Joe Hickerson Drive Dull Care Away Volume I. Folk-Legacy Records, Inc.
Sketch of Henry Belafonte. Text: Belafonte Sings The Blues. A Fool for You. Losing Hand. One for My Baby. In the Evenin' Mama. Hallelujah I Love Her So. The Way That I Feel. Cotton Fields. God Bless the Child. Mary Ann. Sinner's Prayer. Fare Thee Well.

Political speeches and voices, starting with Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles, two quixotic campaigns to which my Dad devoted a lot of time and energy:

Adlai Stevenson: WELCOMING AND ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES AT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION JULY 1952
A recorded portrait of Chester Bowles in conversation with Arnold Michaelis.

This astonishing record in which various stars of the day spoke about the EEOC and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the agency and statute to which my father devoted his entire professional life.

Image: EEOC and photos of Black people at work including Black man in tie with hard hat instructing two white men in hard hats; Black woman telephone operator wearing headset.
EEOC logo and text: These Stars Speak for Equal Employment Opportunity: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Vice President of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey; Frederick O'Neal, President of Actors Equity; Robert Culp; Bill Cosby; Andy Griffith; Porter Wagoner; Shirley Jones; Vince Edwards; Herb Alpert; Tammy Grimes; Count Basie; Dennis Weaver; Jack Warden; Iyan Dixon; Greg Morris; Marlo Thomas; Karl Malden; Diahann Carroll; Florence Henderson.

And more history and political nerdery:

"If I'm Elected" the actual voices of our presidents and their opponents 1892-1952" B&W photos with captions of the following white men: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William J. Bryant, Eugene V. Debs, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Alfred E. Smith, Alfred M. Landon, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Wendell L. Willke, Norman Thomas, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Thomas E. Dewey, Henry A. Wallace, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, with Will Rogers and Irvin S. Cobb. Narrator: John Carradine
F.D.R. Speaks: Authorized edition of speeches, 1933-1945.
Edward R. Murrow A Reporter Remembers. Volume I: The War Years
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.
Photo of two white men in suits and ties. Text: A Time To Keep: 1963. Voices and Events of the Year
A documentary: John F. Kennedy: the presidential years 1960-1963. Image: photo of JFK being sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren (both white men; JFK in a suit; Warren in a judicial robe); crowd of white men behind including LBJ to the right of JFK.
Photo of a large crowd of people with superimposed signs reading "Is Freedom Academic." KPFA Pacifica Radio presents a documentary of the FREE Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley -- Fall 1964
Photo of light-skinned Black man pointing at the camera with a body of water in the background. Text: "Keep the Faith, Baby!" Adam Clayton Powell's Message to the World. Dateline: January 1967, an exclusive live recording.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: In Search of Freedom. Image: profile of MLK.
Image: LBJ (white man, gray hair, suit and tie). Text: Time of Justice. "The time of justice has now come. I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, that day will brighten the lives of every American." Remarks of the President to a joint session of Congress March 15, 1965
Sketch of 8 Black people singing; one is playing the guitar. Text: Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966. Smithsonian Institution. Program in Black American Culture.

Comedy:

An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. POISONING PIGEONS IN THE PARK; BRIGHT COLLEGE DAYS; THE ELEMENTS; A CHRISTMAS CAROL; OEDIPUS REX; IN OLD MEXICO; CLEMENTINE; MAKES A FELLOW PROUD TO BE A SOLDIER; SHE'S MY GIRL; THE MASOCHISM TANGO; WE WILL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO. Image: crowd in a theater watching a man on stage playing the piano.
Tom Lehrer Revisited.
"My Brother's Keeper" Dick Gregory. Image: Black man in suit jacket sitting on a stool with microphone speaking to an audience.

Two children’s records, which I remember fondly, though I regret that the delightful teachings of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cyril Richard, and Benjamin Britten in the “Peter and the Wolf Young Person’s Guide” did not really stick.

THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor; PROKOFIEV: Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67; CYRIL RITCHARD, NARRATOR; Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34. Image: sketch of older man (long white beard) and young boy in the woods with a wolf, a cat, a duck, and a bird.
boris karloff reads the ugly duckling and other tales by hans christian anderson. Image: sketch with a sad duckling in the foreground and a mother duck with ducklings walking away in the background.

And finally, three more records in Russian, two of which I can identify from my father’s handwritten notes — the Folk Song Chorus from Omsk and the Red Army Chorus — and the third my Russian-fluent mother has informed me is gypsy music.

LP in a paper sleeve; all writing is in Russian except my father's handwritten note "Folk Song Chorus from Omsk."
LP in a paper sleeve; all writing is in Russian except my father's handwritten note "Red Army."
LP in paper cover with pink label entirely in Russian

You know who I feel bad for? Alger Hiss.

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Alger Fucking Hiss.  Egghead State Department bureaucrat thrown in jail for his fairly tenuous Soviet contacts.*  Also Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, Lester Cole and others blacklisted in Hollywood for Communist “sympathies.”  Pete Seeger — my musical hero — who was a member of the Communist Party and went to jail for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Image: middle aged white man in a suit jacket with a banjo case over his shoulder.

Pete Seeger arrives at court for sentencing with his banjo over his shoulder, April 4, 1961. Source: New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002709318/

Every schmuck who was called before HUAC and stood their ground or didn’t.  Every government employee — like my Grandpa Clarence Blau —  whose loyalty was questioned for the job they held, a newspaper they subscribed to, a meeting they attended, or a petition they signed.  Every American whose FBI file Herbert Hoover created and padded.  Everyone who was ever on the receiving end Joseph McCarthy’s or Richard Nixon’s bloviating.

We were terrified of people who read newspapers or sang songs or attended meetings full of other newspaper-readers or song-singers.  We made people’s lives miserable and ruined careers based on false and flimsy allegations.

Hell, I’m sort of sorry for the Rosenbergs, even if they were guilty.

Why do I feel bad for the entire spectrum — from pale pink to bright red, from folk singer to spies?  Because none — not one — of those individuals stood on stage before a worldwide audience and handed over our country to the Russians.

*****

*According to my Granddaddy Clen, Hiss was framed by Whittiker Chambers.  Granddaddy probably had a rip-roaring case of OCD, undiagnosed.  He spent much of his adult life gathering files and articles, creating maps and timelines, and filling stacks of 3×5 cards about this conspiracy.  This will mean something to approximately 16 living humans.