From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2014 #265 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe:mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Website:http://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Monday, February 17 2014 Volume 2014 : Number 265 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Pete Seeger, tell us about "We Shall Overcome"? ["Mark" Subject: Re: Pete Seeger, tell us about "We Shall Overcome"? Simon, you just made my day. Being a big fan of Yip Harburg's lyrics, it's just a wonderful feeling to know he was connected with the great Pete Seger. Kind of the same way I felt when I found out that Joni admires Billie Holiday. Thank you, once again, Simon, for your amazing contributions. You raise our awareness here and that's a great thing. Mark in Seattle - -----Original Message----- From: simon@icu.com Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 8:08 AM To: joni@smoe.org Subject: Pete Seeger, tell us about "We Shall Overcome"? PETE SEEGER * 1919 - 2014 JONI MITCHELL: "Ever since I was six I dreamed of being a famous star. Since 12 I dreamed of escaping the Saskatoon winter wonderland to make my fame and fortune in sunny California. I learned to play guitar from a PETE SEEGER instruction book and record. Teen Magazine - Nov. 1973 - - - - - - Few people are aware of Pete Seeger's role in finding and popularizing the song "We Shall Overcome" THE anthem of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The following is from the DEMOCRACY NOW! WebSite and their program "We Shall Overcome: An Hour with Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" Audio, Video and Complete Transcript are avilable at the following URL: AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger, can you tell us about "We Shall Overcome"? PETE SEEGER: I thought, in 1946, when I learned it from a white woman who taught in a union labor school, the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, that the song had been made up in 1946 by tobacco workers, because they sang it there to strike through the winter of 1946 in Charleston, South Carolina, and they taught the song to Zilphia Horton, the teacher at the labor school, and she said, "Oh, it was my favorite song." And I printed it in our little magazine in New York, Peoples Songs, as "We Will Overcome" in 1947. It was a friend of mine, Guy Carawan, who made it famous. He picked up my way of singing it, "We Shall Overcome," although there was another teacher there, Septima Clark, a Black woman. She felt that "shall"  like me, she felt it opened up the mouth better than "will," so thats the way she sang it. Anyway, Guy Carawan in 1960 taught it to the young people at the founding convention of SNCC, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC for short. And a month later, it wasnt a song, it was the song, throughout the South. Only two years ago, I get a letter from a professor in Pennsylvania, who uncovered an issue of the United Mine Workers Journal of February 1909, and a letter there on front page says, "Last year at a strike, we opened every meeting with a prayer, and singing that good old song, 'We Will Overcome.'" So its probably a late 19th century union version of what was a well-known gospel song. Ill overcome, Ill overcome, Ill overcome some day. AMY GOODMAN: You sang it for Martin Luther King? PETE SEEGER: In 1957, I went down to Highlander. Zilphia was dead, and Myles Horton, her husband, said, "We cant have a celebration of 25 years with this school without music. Wont you come down and help lead some songs?" So I went down, and Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy came up from Alabama to say a few words, and I sang a few songs, and that was one of them. Ann Braden drove King to a speaking engagement in Kentucky the next day; and she remembers him sitting in the back seat, saying, "We Shall Overcome." That song really sticks with you, doesnt it?" But he wasnt the song leader. It wasnt until another three years that Guy Carawan made it famous. AMY GOODMAN: Jim Musselman, do you want to add to that? JIM MUSSELMAN: Yes, I just wanted to interject one thing. Pete has always said that the beauty of a song is how it can be used and reused and changed for different movements and everything, and the song "We Shall Overcome," which was used in the Civil Rights Movement was then used in Tiananmen Square and used in so many movements around the world; and when we put out the first volume of The Songs of Pete Seeger, I did the song "We Shall Overcome" with Bruce Springsteen. And Bruce said, "I wanted to do a totally different version of the song," and he personalized it and sang it on a personal level, like he was singing it to one individual. And everybody was at first criticizing us, saying, "Why would you take that song and personalize it to an individual?" And then I started getting letters from parents whose children had leukemia and they said they were singing Bruces version of the song to their child, that well overcome this disease. And then after the Columbine massacre, one of the students out there played the song "We Shall Overcome" that Bruce Springsteen had done out at the Columbine funerals. And then, after September 11th, we got a call from NBC News on September 12th, and they wanted to do a video montage of the rescue workers, and they wanted to use Bruces song, "We Shall Overcome," and the song was played every single hour on the hour by NBC News, and it gave people a sense of hope and a soothing, not only because of Bruces voice, but also the song that they had known, which had been used to overcome so much adversity throughout our history. And thats the wonderful thing about the songs that Pete has found, is that they keep being used and used and used for different movements. And thats the beauty of not only the songs, but the timeless nature of how theyre always going to be used for different things. And its just beautiful to see the way "We Shall Overcome" has been used in so many battles and so many peoples movements around the world. AMY GOODMAN: Even as you are singing songs like that, it has also often been seen as a tremendous threat to the establishment. In 1963, the Fire & Police Research Association of Los Angeles warned before one of your appearances, Pete Seeger, that folk music in young gatherings were being used to brainwash and subvert vast segments of young peoples groups. PETE SEEGER: Oh, poor  I hope theyve learned a little different now. Thats 40 years ago, 41 years ago, but the establishment has always been concerned about music. Ive quoted Plato for years, who wrote, "Its very important that the wrong kind of music not be allowed in the Republic." And Ive also heard theres an old Arab proverb, "When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet." During the 1930s, I was very conscious that radio stations played nice love songs and funny songs, but only by accident did a song like "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" get through. The other songs tended to be more like Bing Crosbys hit of 1933, I think. "Wrap your troubles in dreams. Dream your troubles away." Thats how were going to lick the Depression? AMY GOODMAN: Did you know Yip Harburg, who wrote "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime"? PETE SEEGER: I knew him. I knew him very well. He was a wonderful guy. And I learned from  his son wrote a lovely biography, "The Man Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz"" Is there time to tell that story? AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we have told it on Democracy Now! PETE SEEGER: Oh, well, then if you told it... AMY GOODMAN: No, no, no. There are many who havent heard it. PETE SEEGER: Yip and Harold Arlen, the musician, work out this plum of a job to write songs for a musical version of The Wizard of Oz, and they got this song, and then the producer was going to cut it from the show, says it slows up the opening. And they fought like tigers: "This movie is not going to be made unless this song is in it." Finally, it took Louis B. Mayer, himself, who says, "Were wasting a lot of money sitting around here arguing. Lets get started. Let the boys have their song." And, of course, its that song that brings back a revival of the movie all the time. Its a great song. I sang it last Feb 15th, a year ago. Wow! I was on First Avenue. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people stretched out. And I said, "You know this song. Ill give you the words." And I gave, just like I did with "Turn, Turn, Turn." I said, "Somewhere over the rainbow." And they sang, "Somewhere over the rainbow." "Way up high." "Way up high." "Theres a land I heard of once in a lullaby." "Theres a " So through the whole song, the hundreds of thousands of people sung it. But near the end  I do this whenever I sing the song  I say, "Theres two more short lines to this song, but I have to change two words." And I look heavenward and say, "Somewhere up there I can hear Yip saying, 'Pete, you can fool around with your old folk songs, but don't you touch "Over the Rainbow," please. Yip, wherever you are, I got to change two words 'cause if I'd been there when little Dorothy said, 'Why can't I? Id tell her, 'You know why you can't, Dorothy? Because you only ask for yourself. Youve got to ask for everybody, because either were all going to make it over that rainbow, or nobodys going to make it. And so, sing it, 'If plucky little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why can't you and I?'" And the whole crowd sings these slightly different words. It's beautiful. And, of course, thats the story of Noahs Ark and the rainbow. Im sure Yip was thinking of that. This world will survive when we learn how to coexist. Okay, we disagree. You like to eat this way, and I like to eat that way. You like to dance that way. I like to dance this way. You think of this word meaning such and such. I use the same word, but Im thinking of something different. But if we learn the lesson of the rainbow, we will be here a hundred years from now. AMY GOODMAN: Were talking to Pete Seeger, and on this allmusic.com bio of you, it says "Pete Seegers adherence to the sanctity of folk music came to a boiling point with the advent of folk rock, and its long been rumored that he tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylans very electrified set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1965." Is that true? PETE SEEGER: No. Its true that I dont play electrified instruments. I dont know how to. On the other hand, I have played with people who play them beautifully, and I admire some of them. Howling Wolf was using electrified instruments at Newport just the day before Bob did. But I was furious that the sound was so distorted you could not understand a word that he was singing. He was singing a great song, "Maggies Farm," a great song, but you couldnt understand it. And I ran over to the soundman, said, "Fix the sound so you can understand him." And they hollered back, "No, this is the way they want it!" I dont know who they was, but I was so mad I said "Damn, if I had an axe Id cut the cable right now." I really was that mad. But I wasnt against Bob going electric. As a matter of fact, some of Bobs songs are still my favorites. What an artist he is. What a great  I would say maybe he and Woody and Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds are the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century, even though Irving Berlin made the most money. They wrote songs that were trying to help us understand where we are, what we gotta do. Still are writing them. AMY GOODMAN: Pete Seeger, here on Democracy Now! Back in a minute. andmoreagain, - - - - - - - - - - simonM ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2014 #265 ***************************** ------- To post messages to the list,sendtojoni@smoe.org. Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------