Pete Seeger Honored By Others at GRAMMY Awards

Hello from the Grammy Awards, where the day has already been greatly darkened by the news of Kobe Bryant’s death. Given we are at the home of the Lakers, the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, with thousands of tearful fans, still in shock, gathering to pay tribute. it’s an especially sorrowful place to now celebrate music. Yet, as Stephen Stills wrote long ago, we carry on.
 

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Reasons to rejoice, however, abound. As in one of the very first Grammys awarded in the pre-televised (now rechristened as the  “premiere” portion of the show), awarded to a Pete Seeger album. In the category of Best Historical Album, the Grammy went to Jeff Place and Robert Santelli for producing Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection.

Pete Seeger, who Dylan once called a living saint while others called him a dirty red and blacklisted him from broadcast TV and radio for decades, represents the power of song better than anyone with classics of American folk music he wrote from “If I Had A Hammer” to “Turn, Turn, Turn.” And for the classic songs he championed, from “This Land Is Your Land” to “We Shall Overcome.”

“The idea to do a Pete Seeger set came to us years ago,” said Robert Santelli, “when Jeff and I decided we really wanted Smithsonian/Folkways to celebrate, in a pretty comprehensive fashion,  the icons of American folk music:  Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger. The idea being that this music, which is such an important part of American musical history and American history, be preserved as a physical body of work for future generations. “

“Pete was not only a great songwriter, but a great interpreter of songs,” said Santelli. “A lot of people heard `This Land Is Your Land’ the first time because of Pete. He was someone who understood the power of song. He dedicated his life not just to American folk music, but to all folk music. He always knew that music is the voice of the people – around the world.

“We had the great fortune of getting to work with Pete on a numerous occasions. So being able to memorialize his work and to put it in the context of this boxed set makes us proud and humbled, and I know that I speak for all of us – it makes us feel we are doing something good. Because now there is a physical body of work that we can pass onto future generations so they do know who Pete Seeger is.

“Pete was a special man,” said Place. “He’d find all these different causes, and put his full, complete energy into them, and he’d bring music to these causes. He also used the analogy of Johnny Appleseed, how he would give out seeds for decades that became forests of trees. Pete threw out ideas ”

Pete Seeger

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