[78-L] Mike Seeger

[Robert Shirer]

Thanks for posting this, David.  Another great one gone.
The obituary is ok, but really: "The group did a series of recordings for 
Smithsonian Folkways, a non-profit record label of the Smithsonian 
Institution"  Eek.  Let us give Moe Asch his due.  The group did not record 
for Smithsonian Folkways, they recorded for Folkways, which may not have 
made lots of profit, but was in no way a non-profit record label.  Moe had 
lots of faults, but he gave us enduring recordings of amazing people, whom 
more profit oriented labels never would have taken seriously.

I never heard Mike perform, but I had a fun encounter with Peggy Seeger here 
in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She came to offer a free concert at our Student 
Union, and I flatter myself that I managed to get several kids from a German 
conversation class to go and listen.  I wore a sweatshirt with a picture of 
a black lab on it.  At her intermission, Peggy walked through the room, saw 
my shirt, asked if it were my dog, and heard that it wasn't, but was a good 
likeness.  She sat down, and we talked dogs for most of her intermission.  I 
had brought my copy of her first album, a 10 incher on Folkways (it had 
first been released on another label, which escapes my memory).  She signed 
it and told me that the night before she had recorded it, she had stayed at 
Josh White's apartment in Manhattan, and he had introduced her to gin.  She 
said she had been hung over when she recorded it.  It is nonetheless a great 
record.  And Peggy is a great musician.  So is Pete, and so was Mike.  What 
a wonderful family.

Cheers,
Bob Shirer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
To: "78L" <78-L at 78online.com>
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 10:34 PM
Subject: [78-L] Mike Seeger


Not unexpected, but I don't think I saw his death mentioned on this list 
yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/08/10/mike-seeger-obit.html
Folk revivalist Mike Seeger dies at 75
Last Updated: Monday, August 10, 2009 | 4:43 PM ET
CBC News

Mike Seeger, an American folk musician and folklorist who was younger
half-brother to singer Pete Seeger, has died. He was 75.

Seeger died of cancer Aug. 7 at his home in Lexington, Va., according to his
wife, Alexia Smith. He had multiple myeloma.

He is credited with reviving American folk music in the 1950s and 1960s, and
with saving many songs from before the age of recording from disappearing.

     'He was the supreme archetype [of the folk musician]. He could push a
stake through Dracula's black heart. He was the romantic, egalitarian and
revolutionary type all at once."'—Bob Dylan

Mike Seeger was a collector of traditional Southern rural music and, as a 
music
scholar, gathered the stories behind old-time music as well as recording and
archiving them.

He had a distinctive voice and played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer,
guitar, mouth harp, mandolin and dobro.

In 1958, he formed the New Lost City Ramblers, recording albums such as
American Moonshine and Prohibition Songs and Gone to the Country.

Their trademark was musical authenticity — performing songs from the rural
string bands of the 1920s and 1930s — rather than protest and politics like
Pete Seeger's group, the Weavers.

Mike Seeger played on the Ry Cooder album My Name is Buddy in 2007 and 
played
autoharp on the Grammy-winning Raising Sand, by Robert Plant and Alison 
Krauss.

Seeger was born Aug. 15, 1933 into a New York family, son of 
ethnomusicologist
Charles Louis Seeger. His mother Ruth, a composer, worked at the Archive of
American Folk Song during a period when the family lived in Washington. His
sister Peggy also became a folk singer.

Folk musicians such as Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, John Jacob Niles, and 
others
were frequent guests in the Seeger home and Mike Seeger began collecting 
songs
at about age 20.

Throughout the 1960s and '70s, he performed songs that would otherwise have
been lost with the New Lost City Ramblers. The group did a series of 
recordings
for Smithsonian Folkways, a non-profit record label of the Smithsonian 
Institution.

He was an influence on the young Bob Dylan who once said of him: "Mike was
unprecedented. As for being a folk musician, he was the supreme archetype. 
He
could push a stake through Dracula's black heart. He was the romantic,
egalitarian and revolutionary type all at once."

Seeger has been a special consultant for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival,
Newport Folk Festival, and other major folk music organizations and was
director of the American Old Time Music Festival.

He had six Grammy nominations including nods for the 1998 recording Southern
Banjo Sounds and the New Lost City Ramblers' 1997 album There's No Way Out.

Seeger is survived by his wife, three sons and four stepchildren.





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