Whether it was how to keep the Hudson River clean, how to hoist a sail, how to stand up for peace and civil rights or to appreciate beauty, Seeger’s lessons have quietly become the base on which many people stand. I have seen his boat on the Hudson, it was almost a "monument" ....
Pete Seeger, who helped create the modern American folk music movement and co-wrote some of its most enduring songs such as "If I Had a Hammer," died on Monday at the age of 94.
Seeger, a Woody Guthrie protege whose songwriting credits included folk classics "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!," died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, his grandson Kitama Cahill Jackson told the New York Times and the Associated Press.
Seeger also was known for his liberal politics, working as an environmentalist, protesting against wars from Vietnam to Iraq and being sentenced to prison for refusing to testify to Congress about his time in the Communist Party. The case was dismissed years later.
The controversy shattered Seeger's career. He continued to record and make concert appearances but was barred from network TV for 17 years.
By the early 1960s, he had returned to performing at schools and colleges and came to view the blacklist as a blessing in disguise: He was showing "a whole generation of young people you didn't need to depend on the commercial world to make a living."
When he finally returned to television in 1967 on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" on CBS, his antiwar song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," was censored. But after his performance was broadcast the next year, it was credited with helping to cement public opinion against the war.
"At some point, Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history," Bruce Springsteen said at the all-star Madison Square Garden concert marking Seeger's 90th birthday in 2009.
He performed at a concert marking Barack Obama's presidential inauguration that same year.
Seeger, a Woody Guthrie protege whose songwriting credits included folk classics "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!," died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, his grandson Kitama Cahill Jackson told the New York Times and the Associated Press.
Seeger also was known for his liberal politics, working as an environmentalist, protesting against wars from Vietnam to Iraq and being sentenced to prison for refusing to testify to Congress about his time in the Communist Party. The case was dismissed years later.
The controversy shattered Seeger's career. He continued to record and make concert appearances but was barred from network TV for 17 years.
By the early 1960s, he had returned to performing at schools and colleges and came to view the blacklist as a blessing in disguise: He was showing "a whole generation of young people you didn't need to depend on the commercial world to make a living."
When he finally returned to television in 1967 on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" on CBS, his antiwar song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," was censored. But after his performance was broadcast the next year, it was credited with helping to cement public opinion against the war.
"At some point, Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history," Bruce Springsteen said at the all-star Madison Square Garden concert marking Seeger's 90th birthday in 2009.
He performed at a concert marking Barack Obama's presidential inauguration that same year.
