There Is A Season: The Pete Seeger Podcast

Join us for this episode where I speak with Pete Seeger’s biographer, David Dunaway. We discuss David’s early connection to Pete Seeger and his music, and how he came to publish three editions of Seeger's biography. We also talk about the archive of Pete Seeger material David has produced for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, as well Pete’s involvement with Folkways Records, the legacy of the Clearwater, and David’s perceptions of how Pete might be represented in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”. We conclude by discussing David’s favorite Seeger records, in addition to what general message people should know about Pete Seeger now that we are a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

In this epsiode we examine several of Pete Seeger’s albums recorded and released after the period of the Blacklist. We discuss the Bowdoin College Concert and Live at the Village Gate, and his first Columbia albums - Story Songs, The Bitter and the Sweet, and Children's Concert at Town Hall. We also dissect Pete’s efforts to bring folk music to people through television, particularly the controversy over censorship surrounding the failed attempt to get Seeger to appear on the Hootenanny television show.

In this episode we delve into Pete Seeger's legal challenges in facing the House-Un American Activities Committee in 1955 and the impact of Seeger’s decision not to cooperate with them. We also investigate how Seeger’s status as a blacklisted artist resulted in the prolific amount of performing and music-making he did throughout the remainder of the 1950s into the early '60s. Specifically, we examine the multitude of his Folkways albums, live concerts and the musical foundation he worked towards establishing for other up-and-coming musicians and listeners.

In this episode we examine the quartet, The Weavers, the folk group Pete Seeger formed with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert in 1949-1950. We go into detail with the founding of the group, their musical style and approach, and their initial pop success with the songs "Tzena Tzena" and "Goodnight Irene". We then investigate how the FBI, Counterattack, and other opportunistic individuals and institutions conspired to cancel the group from show business by labeling them as Communists during the peak of the Blacklist in the early-mid 1950s.

This episode delves into the Peekskill Affair of August and September 1949. This concert, held in Peekskill, New York, functioned as a fundraiser for the Civil Rights Congress, where Pete Seeger opened for the baritone-bass singer Paul Robeson. The show was rescheduled due to violence that erupted at the first attempted concert in late August, and while this second performance did happen, hundreds of Anti-Communist Veterans in Westchester County organized a violent and sorrowful attack on the concert attendees in a fascist Labor Day weekend bloodbath.

In this episode we discuss Pete’s musical activities from 1942-1949. We focus on Pete's activities as a performer in the army during WWII, the additional records Pete made during this period, the founding of the People’s Songs organization after the war, and how that eventually came to a close.

In this episode we discuss Pete’s activities between 1940 and 1942 with the Almanac Singers. This episode will get into the founding of the group and its members, its political and musical direction, and the challenges the group faced in trying to continue playing and performing.

This episode investigates Pete's musical and political discoveries between 1938 and 1941. We look at Pete in New York City after leaving Harvard, his meeting Lead Belly, his work and travels with Woody Guthrie, and his own independent explorations riding freight trains and hitching rides as a budding musician.

This episode delves into Pete Seeger's early years growing up in upstate New York and at boarding school; his political worldview as channeled through his educational experiences and his father, Charles; Pete's discovery of the 4 and 5 string banjo in the 1930s; and his attending and dropping out of Harvard.

Welcome to the show! This four minute introductory episode informs folks of what topics, ideas and objectives this podcast will have.