Pete Seeger - Live in '65 '2009

Tracks list

       Pete Seeger was 90 years old when this newly discovered archival concert
recording was released; he had been half that age when he performed the show at
the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh, PA, on February 20, 1965. At that time,
the 45-year-old Seeger was enjoying a renewed era of approbation after more than
a decade of partial suppression that was not yet over (it would be another two
and a half years before he'd be allowed on network television again). His 1963
concert album We Shall Overcome had reached the charts, its title song becoming
such a catch phrase that even President Johnson used it; he had undertaken a
world tour in 1963-1964; and his songs were being tapped for hits. Among them,
"Turn! Turn! Turn!," which he performed at this concert, would be recorded in a
folk-rock arrangement by the Byrds that became a number one hit by the end of
the year. The Pittsburgh show, running more than an hour and three-quarters, is
a typical one for him, albeit that, typically, he made several gestures toward
the local audience for which he was performing, including songs with references
to the area or that had been written by songwriters from around the area,
starting with "Oh Susanna" by Stephen Foster. Seeger never worked from a set
list, and his performance style was anything but polished, but there was a
definite form to his show, and he was never less than engaged with his audience.
Generally, as here, he began with the local references, then went into a clutch
of folk songs, some of them serious and politically oriented ("He Lies in an
American Land"), some humorous (the risqué "Uh, Uh, Uh" and "Never Wed an Old
Man"). Then, he moved on to an international section, again mixing the political
(the plaintive lament of an imagined child killed at Hiroshima, "I Come and
Stand at Every Door") and the comic (Scottish Matt McGinn's ode to horse
excrement, "Manyura Manya"). Anthemic singalongs like "This Little Light of
Mine" led to a final section of some of the singer's best-known material, such
as his own "If I Had a Hammer" and his mentor Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your
Land." And the final encore was a children's song, "Abiyoyo." The song
selections could vary, but this was the general structure of Seeger's shows in
the ‘60s. Often, here, he stumbles over his words, trying to remember all
the lyrics of one of the hundreds of songs in his repertoire. He does not
hesitate to interrupt a song to tell a story or provide some annotation, and he
frequently asks his audience to sing with him, sometimes instructing them in
different harmony parts. He was, arguably, at one of the peaks of his career in
early 1965, after the harshest experiences of the blacklist, before the anguish
of the escalating Vietnam War and the unwelcome (to him) transformation of folk
music into folk-rock. No wonder he sounded so confident in Pittsburgh.

Tracklist:
1 01. Pete Seeger - Oh Susanna (Live) (04:01)
1 02. Pete Seeger - He Lies in an American Land (Live) (03:47)
1 03. Pete Seeger - Oleanna (Live) (03:20)
1 04. Pete Seeger - Uh, Uh, Uh (Live) (02:30)
1 05. Pete Seeger - Never Wed an Old Man (Live) (02:36)
1 06. Pete Seeger - When I First Came to This Land (Live) (04:17)
1 07. Pete Seeger - All Mixed Up (Live) (05:19)
1 08. Pete Seeger - I Come and Stand at Every Door (Live) (02:38)
1 09. Pete Seeger - Malaika (Live) (01:59)
1 10. Pete Seeger - May There Always Be Sunshine (Live) (01:46)
1 11. Pete Seeger - Manyura Manya (Live) (04:10)
1 12. Pete Seeger - The Freedom Come-All-Ye (Live) (04:52)
1 13. Pete Seeger - Peat Bog Soldiers (Live) (03:12)
1 14. Pete Seeger - Los Cuatro Generales (Live) (03:49)
1 15. Pete Seeger - Turn! Turn! Turn! (Live) (03:51)
1 16. Pete Seeger - Healing River (Live) (04:23)
2 17. Pete Seeger - This Little Light of Mine (Live) (06:24)
2 18. Pete Seeger - Old Joe Clark (Live) (04:00)
2 19. Pete Seeger - Going Across the Mountain (Live) (03:27)
2 20. Pete Seeger - Praties Grow Small (Live) (02:02)
2 21. Pete Seeger - Step by Step (Live) (01:05)
2 22. Pete Seeger - Greensleeves (Live) (02:20)
2 23. Pete Seeger - I Once Loved a Lass (Live) (01:48)
2 24. Pete Seeger - Queen Anne Front (Live) (03:44)
2 25. Pete Seeger - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Live) (06:36)
2 26. Pete Seeger - The Bells of Rhymney (Live) (03:47)
2 27. Pete Seeger - If I Had a Hammer (Live) (03:02)
2 28. Pete Seeger - Guantanamera (Live) (04:38)
2 29. Pete Seeger - This Land is Your Land (Live) (03:31)
2 30. Pete Seeger - Where Have All the Flowers Gone (Live) (02:12)
2 31. Pete Seeger - Abiyoyo (Live) (05:48) 

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