ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 6, 1996 TAG: 9607080128
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEACON, N.Y.
SOURCE: DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
From his home on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, Pete Seeger can see where the water turns into a section the Dutch called the Water Gut for the unforgiving way it treated boaters in a storm.
At 77, Seeger has lived long enough to see plenty of water flow down his beloved river.
His advancing years have done little to diminish a passion for art and left-wing politics, or his awareness of the ironies brought on by age.
Hauled before Congress in the 1950s and blacklisted for his communist leanings, Seeger recently went on a concert tour sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency.
Legendary for an act of hostility toward rock 'n' roll - yanking the plug on Bob Dylan when the singer went electric at the Newport Folk Festival - he was inducted this year into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
And this cruel irony: The man who loves music so much he looks forward to singalongs at potluck suppers can barely lift his voice in song anymore.
``My voice is gone,'' he said. ``I'm mainly a song leader now. I stand on stage with a banjo and sing, `If I had a hammer...' From there on, the audience sings it and I call out the words.''
Seeger is a walking history book of American music. Songs he wrote and popularized like ``If I Had a Hammer,'' ``Kisses Sweeter Than Wine'' and ``Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'' have become standards.
He lives life simply in his home 40 miles from New York City. His many windows are filled with the majesty of the Hudson. He can watch a replica of an old trading ship that he was instrumental in building sail past with a boatload of schoolchildren on an educational outing.
Seeger chops wood and, with his wife, Toshi, answers the many phone calls and letters from old friends. His schedule is busier these days because he's just released his first compact disc in more than a decade.
Even his birthday is no cause for adjusting the routine. He conducts a morning interview and doesn't beg out of his afternoon assignment: cleaning out a chemical toilet at a nearby clubhouse before a meeting.
And, of course, Seeger tries to sing whenever he can.
His father was a college professor, a musicologist. When Charles Seeger took Pete to a folk music festival in Asheville, N.C., in 1935, the boy was smitten. He traveled the country with his banjo throughout the 1940s with fellow singer Woody Guthrie.
``I was 16 when I learned from my father that there was a lot of good music in my country that I had never heard on the radio,'' he said.
``I started trying to learn it. I'm still trying to learn it. I'm still hearing things that make me amazed.''
Seeger joined the Weavers in the late 1940s. When they recorded the Leadbelly song, ``Goodnight Irene'' in 1950, it was the biggest-selling song since World War II. Seeger couldn't escape his voice on the jukebox.
He considers the 1950s the high point of his career, when he toured college campuses introducing the songs of Guthrie, Leadbelly and many others. It led to a folk music boom and opened the door to singer-songwriters of another generation, like Dylan.
Seeger's politics made him an outcast. In 1955, he was called before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigating supposed subversive influences in entertainment. He refused to cooperate and was blacklisted from television networks.
``I quote [fellow Weaver] Lee Hays, `If it wasn't for the honor of it, I would just as soon not have been blacklisted,' '' he said.
Age hasn't mellowed his views; Seeger's face clouds over in an interview when he spits out venomous words about corporate control of finances and the media. Just as quickly, the cloud passes.
It was his temper that led to pulling the plug on Dylan in 1965, an action that he's still trying to explain. He wasn't angry at Dylan for playing rock 'n' roll, just that the public address system was turned up so far that no one could understand the words. Of course, that's just what the musicians wanted.
People thought he was still mad at rock 'n' roll when Seeger didn't speak at his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. He just waved and smiled.
Seeger's explanation was simple - he had forgotten his hearing aid and couldn't tell what people were saying about him.
``Now, of course, belatedly, here is what I would have said: Rock is what future centuries will probably say is 20th century folk music,'' he said. ``It's part of the long chain of American music which combines African elements and European elements and other elements, too. The guitar came from Asia.''
Singer Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son, delivered one of those induction speeches Seeger couldn't hear. He said in an interview he finds it difficult to tell how much he learned from watching Seeger.
``Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is indebted in some way to Pete Seeger,'' Guthrie said. ``Pete and others like him reminded the world that music belonged to everybody, not just a few experts or a few well-paid professionals.
``I think he was philosophically opposed to experts in the field of music, even though his father was one, his mother was one and he was one,'' he said. ``Philosophically, he stands diametrically opposed to how wonderful he is.''
Folk music, to Seeger, is less about someone strumming an acoustic guitar and singing into a microphone than it is keeping a tradition alive.
He listens to CDs rarely; he checked his own new one only once just to make sure everything was OK. He'd rather sing.
``The folk process is present in pop music, in classical music, in church music, in all sorts of things,'' he said. ``It's been changed with the invention of printing and the invention of recording and now with computer and e-mail, but it hasn't been killed.
``People still hear things and say, `I like that, but I think I'm going to leave out that phrase and substitute a different phrase.' It happens all the time.''
Seeger's new CD tries to teach. There's a song about Leadbelly, a song about the Hudson, songs about the environment. Seeger explains the lineage of each of the songs, those he wrote and others he borrowed. He tries to demystify the process of songwriter.
``Most of my best songs have been written without any intention of other people singing them,'' he said. ``I just kind of made them up for my own amusement.''
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Folk singer Pete Seeger has just released his firstby CNBcompact disc in more than a decade. color.