Ruth’s background as a composer was helpful in transcribing many of the recordings collected by the Lomaxes and archived by the Library of Congress (and subsequently published by Smithsonian Folkways and now online). Her marriage to Charles produced four children — Pete’s half-siblings — including Peggy and Mike.

Peggy Seeger has been a folk-singer, songwriter, political activist and muse. She recorded (with her brother Mike) American Folk Songs for Children (1955) and wrote “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer.”

The Seeger family has always been left-leaning (Charles lost a job at UC Berkeley for opposing American involvement in the First World War — too liberal for Berkeley!). Peggy travelled to the Soviet Union and China before US had diplomatic relations with the Communist nations and ran into trouble with the US Dept of State. As a result, she ended up as an ex-pat in England where she met Ewan MacColl. They had three children together (although he was married to another at the time) and MacColl wrote a song about falling in love with her. You may remember Roberta Flack’s version of that song, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face:

Oh, also, one of MacColl’s daughters (not with Peggy) was Kirsty, the awesome singer and songwriter who sang on The Pogues’ most excellent Christmas song: “Fairytale of New York,” (produced by Kirsty MacColl’s husband at the time, Steve Lillywhite [who also produced an album called "Boy" for some Irish band {who came here expecting a U2 reference? Not me}]). She also recorded Electric Landlady, which not only has the best title for an album ever (probably suggested by Johnny Marr of the Smiths), but also includes the song “In These Shoes?”

Okay, so Kirsty MacColl is Pete Seeger’s half-sister’s lover’s daughter.

Back to the Seegers.

Peggy’s brother Mike Seeger (Pete’s half-brother) was an accomplished folk musician who formed a trio called the New Lost City Ramblers, an important band that produced a more old-timey sound, more historical and not as polished as his half-brother’s band The Weavers. Here’s an NPR story on the 50th anniversary of the New Lost City Ramblers. It’s not hard to draw a direct line from Mike Seeger to events like the annual Lowell Banjo and Fiddle Festival.

The latest folk-singing Seeger to gain some prominence is Tao Seeger, the grandson of Pete and his wife Toshi. Here’s Tao singing one of his grandfather’s songs:

He also performed with his grandfather, Bruce Springsteen and a few other folks at President Obama’s inauguration:

Tao records in Spanish and English and has performed with The Mammals, as well as with Sarah Guthrie. But her family is a tale for another day.

Listen to Gutherie’s original recording:

While the “schoolhouse” version of the song still maintained the verses that celebrated the beauty of the country, in Guthrie’s plainspoken poetry, it clearly didn’t communicate the nuanced view that Guthrie had of the America he had seen up close, “From California to the New York Island.” As a traveling minstrel, Guthrie criss-crossed America during the 193o’s and 1940’s and saw both the grandeur and the injustice that made America such a contradictory and complex country, a country full of promise and problems, one that Guthrie loved dearly, and was still yet to fulfill the promise of its founding principles.

Roots

Interestingly, Guthrie lifted the melody and chord progression directly from The Carter Family’s “When the World’s On Fire,”

This practice reflects an age-0ld tradition where folk music literally belongs to the people, and anyone can take a song and make it new by writing new lyrics to make it current again. Hard to believe that, in this age of copyright lawsuits, when people are sued for thousands of dollars if they dare to download a copy of a song they like, that a musician like Guthrie would encourage others to take his music and update his lyrics to their own use, the way he did with the original Carter Family tune, and in fact the way every musician before him and since crafts songs by drawing on a tradition of music and a wellspring of songs and melodies that their musical predecessors have given the world.

Hidden in Plain Sight

It’s fascinating to hear how Guthrie’s work was kept alive and vital through the work of his son, Arlo, and his protogee, Pete Seeger, as they both continued to sing Woody’s songs to audiences that never had a chance to hear Woody Guthrie sing them himself. Even as Pete Seeger was driven out of the “mainstream media” in the 1950’s by the same clique of anti-communists that found the sentiments of Guthrie’s “secret verses” intolerable, he continue to sing to school kids, churches, and union halls, keeping the song alive in its full form, a reminder that, even if you can’t play your music on the TV or the radio, no one can stop you from picking up your guitar and joining your voices in harmony wherever people may gather and meet.

At the same time, millions of kids sang the “safe” version of Guthrie’s song in schools across the country, so the strains of the melody would be forever embedded in their unconscious, ready for the time when the whole song, all the verses, could be sung aloud, still ringing with meaning and relevance. For now, almost 80 years after Woody Guthrie first wrote the words to “This Land is Your Land” in his neat, precise penmanship, we face many of the same problems that he knew from firsthand experience: massive disparities between the rich and the poor, a financial and political system that serve the interests of a narrow elite, increasing hardship and suffering for the majority of Americans while a few gorge themselves on power and privilege, and a sense that the country has perhaps lost its way, lost sight of the ideals that animated our rise from a few tenuous colonies on the edge of a vast and mysterious wilderness to a world-spanning colossus that espoused freedom and democracy as an antidote to tyranny and oppression.

His lyrics still ring true today, reminding us how much work still remains for us to reach those lofty goals, yet how much hope and beauty we can find just by looking out to our “endless skyway.” Guthrie understood that the people of this country, be they poor, hungry, dispossessed, are still the greatest strength and hope, that our freedom to savor the splendor of our nation connects us to the country’s founding principles, and protects us still from the tyranny of unchecked power and wealth: “Nobody living can ever stop me, / As I go walking that freedom highway.”

For this reason, Guthrie’s song remains an anthem that’s just as relevant today as it was when he wrote it on February 23, 1940, a song of protest and solidarity for every American who longs for a day when words like “freedom and justice for all” are more than just a far off ideal or a fairy tale from a history book.

Some Other Versions You May Enjoy

Guest Tom Morello, guitarist from Rage Against the Machine, sings This Land and strums his acoustic, as he does at many Occupy rallies across the nation (warning: contains naughty words):

Springsteen, in the middle of the Reagan years, sings a poignant version at the height of his career:

Pete Seeger and Springsteen, in Washington DC, sing all the verses, with everyone helping out:

To hear many other Woody Guthrie songs, with others from the American songbook, join us on May 6 at our spring concert.

Terry Gross recently had a long interview with Carole King on Fresh Air, where they discussed becoming a songwriter, Gerry Goffin (King’s writing partner and ex-husband), and King’s life in music. It’s worth listening to.

To put the conversation in a bit of context, Gross wanted to be a songwriter when she was younger, and King was just a few years older and from around the same neighborhood.

One thing King doesn’t talk about in that interview is how she became a performer: she moved to Los Angeles (Laurel Canyon, specifically) and was part of James Taylor’s band. JT encouraged her to sing her songs on stage as part of their set.

“I was just with him on his little college tour the first year he went out,” she says. “And James one night just said, ‘You’re going to perform ‘Up on the Roof’ tonight.’ It was just a wonderful transition for me, from being really scared to realizing that the audience was with me, and it’s because James had set me up for that.” -NPR

Taylor recorded King’s song “You’ve Got a Friend” (and played guitar on her recording of it on Tapestry). On their recent reunion album “Live at the Troubadour,” Taylor says, to introduce the song:

I remember standing there and hearing maybe the best pop tune ever written. I didn’t realize it at the time that I would be singing that song every night for the rest. of. my. life. [laughter] But it’s a great song to be known for and I’ve travelled around the world on this tune.

For an altogether weirder, fictional take on King’s world, you can check out the Alison Anders movie “Grace of My Heart” (IMDb, Wikipedia) which follows a songwriter through a tumultuous marriage and eventual success on stage. The movie’s a bit goofy, but if you know the people who made pop music in that era, it’s fun to see how they are fictionalized.