Paul Zollo: I interviewed Pete Seeger recently --
Bob Dylan: He's a great man, Pete Seeger.
Paul Zollo: I agree. He said, "All songwriters are links in a chain." Without your link in that chain, all of songwriting would have evolved much differently. You said how you brought folk music to rock music. Do you think that would have happened without you?
Bob Dylan: Somebody else would have done it in some other kind of way. But, hey, so what? So what? You can lead people astray awfully easily. Would people have been better off? Sure. They would have found somebody else. Maybe different people would have found different people, and would have been influenced by different people. - From Song Talk Magazine, interview April 4, 1991.
Peter Seeger was born on May 3, 1919. It has been well documented that Seeger was an early supporter of Bob Dylan.
In May, 1962, Dylan appeared with Pete Seeger, Gil Turner, and Sis Cunningham on the Broadside program at WBAI Studios in New York City. It was not broadcast until the fall of that year.
Dylan performed three of the eight songs during the one-hour broadcast: "Ballad Of Donald White", "The Death Of Emmett Till", and "Blowin' In The Wind". Seeger, Turner, and Cunningham sang backup on the last song. Part of "Emmett Till" was included on the Interactive Music CD–ROM Highway 61 Interactive, while the others were released on the Folkways 1972 release, Broadside Reunion.
Seeger and Dylan shared the stage twice at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. On July 26, 1963, at the evening finale, Dylan lead Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, the Freedom Singers, and Peter, Paul & Mary, through "Blowin' In The Wind", and joined in singing the traditional "We Shall Overcome". The following day, at the Topical Song workshop, Seeger joined Dylan on "Playboys and Playgirls".
You can see and hear some of these performances on the DVD/Blu-Ray, The Other Side Of The Mirror, the Vanguard LPs Evening Concerts At Newport, Vol. 1 andNewport Broadside, and the Vanguard CDs Evening Concerts: Newport Folk Festival 1963 and Newport Folk Festival.
There has been some controversy surrounding Seeger's reaction to Dylan "going Electric" two years later. In 2001, Seeger has this to say to David Kupfer, in an interview for Whole Earth magazine, Spring 2001:
It was at Newport, 1965. I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "You didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.
Dylan next shared the stage with Seeger at a tribute to Seeger's friend and colleague, Woody Guthrie, in 1968. There were two shows at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968. For each show, Dylan did a three song set with members of The Band. For the afternoon show, Dylan joined Seeger, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, and others for the finale of "This Land Is Your Land", while the evening show had the same artists performing "This Train Is Bound For Glory" instead.
Dylan, Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Melanie, Phil Ochs, Dave van Ronk, and Larry Estridge performed at Friends of Chile Benefit Concert at New York's Felt Forum on May 9, 1974. Guthrie did his father's song, "Deportee", while Dylan sang versions of "North Country Blues", "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue", and "Blowin' In The Wind".
According to Dylan Cover, Seeger has covered Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind", "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", "Masters Of War" [with spoken Japanese translation], "Paths Of Victory", and "Who Killed Davey Moore?".
Happy birthday, Mr. Seeger!
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