(5 May 2006)
Part 1: G14009
Part 2: G14009a
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beacon, New York – 5 May 2006
1. Various of Seeger and the Beacon Sloop Club
2. Interview of Seeger by AP writer Michael Hill
3. Various of Seeger on pier
4. Seeger performs “Newspapermen”
5. Various of area around Beacon Sloop Club
STORYLINE:
After 87 years, Pete Seeger’s voice is down to a husky purr. The head once crammed with hundreds of songs can now call up, by his count, merely dozens.
He still sings and plays banjo, though.
He performs at churches, parties and — what the heck — on a ferry dock on the Hudson River during a recent interview. Commuters heading home from Manhattan look up at the lanky old man tapping his foot, plucking, and jauntily singing, “Ohhh, newspapermen meet such interesting people!”
Some stop and smile. One guy snaps shut his cell phone and shakes Seeger’s hand with a hearty: “Mr. Seeger, I just want to thank you!”
Seeger has been singing out like this since the Great Depression. The earnest troubadour who either co-wrote or popularized canonical songs like “If I Had a Hammer” and “John Henry” has become something like America’s folkie emeritus. He’s back on the charts now, sort of, with the release of “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” featuring Bruce Springsteen’s full-throated versions of standards performed by Seeger. The classic songs not only tell good stories, Springsteen has said, but remain relevant.
“Shameful,” Seeger deadpanned. “I’m so respectable.”
The new album is bringing bushels of fan mail to Seeger’s hilltop home north of New York City. And it validates the philosophy he has held since his train-hopping days — the idea that good songs don’t go out of style, they just get tweaked from generation to generation. Seeger notes that the album’s leadoff track “Old Dan Tucker” was the “No. 1 hit of the year 1844!”
Seeger said he is pleased with the album. But he still has a quibble with the song selection, which is heavy on rousing numbers like “Pay Me My Money Down.”
“If I was picking the tunes, of course, I would have picked some others,” he said. “I think I’d pick a few serious songs, like ’Walking Down Death Row.”’
Then he sings the mournful song.
Still speaking out at 87
Seeger marked his 87th birthday May 3 by turning the phone off so he wouldn’t have to answer it “every five minutes.” Toshi, his wife since 1943, had family and friends for dinner. He said he feels good for his age and stays busy.
“I’ve got chores to do. Mow the lawn. Clean leaves out of ditches. Shovel gravel. Split firewood. Stack it,” he said. “And help my wife.”
Fittingly, for a man who held his own with Woody Guthrie, Seeger is a good talker. Listening to him can bring to mind a rumbling freight train constantly switching tracks. He segues easily from autobiographical yarns to a conjectural anecdote about Shakespeare helping write the King James Bible to the deer that eat Toshi’s tulips.
“I get sidetracked. I start with one story and I get going on another story.”
There’s still a hint of vinegar in him. too — the strong opinions that stem from years of singing at union halls, colleges, civil rights rallies and peace protests. During a riverside interview at the Beacon Sloop Club, Seeger predicted supporters of President Bush would be sorry one day and offered 50/50 odds that the human race would be around in 100 years.
“He said, ‘Pete, if you don’t grow, you die.”’ Seeger recalled. “Well, one o’clock that night I was up in bed thinking ‘Isn’t it true the quicker you grow, the sooner we die?”’
AP video by Ted Shaffrey
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