Tuesday, January 28, 2014

R.I.P. Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger, Legendary Folk Musician and Activist, Dies at 94
94 years is a pretty good run.  I was fortunate to see Pete and Arlo and family perform at Carnegie Hall a few times in the last decade.  Our cousins have made it an annual tradition for something like 40 years and I am so glad they invited us to join in a wonderful experience. 

Pete Seeger was a giant. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.
When Seeger was honored by the Kennedy Center in 1994, President Bill Clinton described him as "an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them." He supported the labor movement in the forties and fifties, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., participated in anti-Vietnam War rallies, and spent decades fighting to clean up the Hudson River. Seeger and his wife Toshi lived on the same property in Beacon, NY since 1949. She died last year, just days before their 70th anniversary. The couple had three children and six grandchildren. Seeger never retired from performing or political activism. He marched in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and joined Bruce Springsteen to sing "This Land Is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during President Obama's first inauguration. "He was so happy that day," Springsteen recalled. "It was like, 'Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.' It was so nice."

The next time Ted Nugent says some jackassed thing, remember you can pull up a little Pete on Youtube for a palate cleanser.

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