1 single in 1961 to its featured role in the hugely popular Disney film and Broadway musical The Lion King, the song has enchanted generations, sold millions of copies and passed into the world’s musical vernacular as a modern folk tune. One who did was Sam Hinton, curator of the Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium Museum at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego. From Pete Seeger’s version in 1952 (titled Wimoweh) to the Tokens’ No. Outside of activists within People's Songs, few people bought Seeger's record. Pete Seeger recorded it in 1948 for Irwin Silber and Brownie McGhee's Encore label. Laced with irony, the song circulated among other singer-songwriters after its appearance as Atomic Talking Blues in the January 1947 People's Songs Bulletin. After interviewing scientists on the consequences of a nuclear war, he wrote Old Man Atom, a talking blues using a musical template Woody Guthrie adapted from the recordings of Chris Bouchillon. When Earl Robinson opened the first People's Songs office on the West Coast, Partlow became one of its earliest members. In the mid-'40s forties he hosted a program covering labor issues for a Los Angeles station. Hired by the Los Angeles Daily News, he became an early supporter of the American Newspaper Guild, formed in 1933. The organization set up a booking office for its members and encouraged aspiring singer-songwriters and established composers to send sheet music or demos of new topical songs for possible publication in the monthly bulletin.Īlthough some professional composers were among People's Songs' earliest supporters, the most enduring songs to emerge from the movement were penned by non-professionals like Vern Partlow, a Los Angeles journalist and union activist.īorn May 25, 1910, in Bloomington, Illinois, Verneil Partlow moved to California after working for newspapers and radio stations in Wisconsin and Chicago. In October 1947, the organization held its first national convention in Chicago. Within a year's time the People's Songs concept spread to other major North American cities. Committees were established to find office space, set up a corporation, establish a regular newsletter, secure financing and recruit new members. Reaching out to New York's leftist folk, theatrical and literary communities, Seeger invited potential members to attend the December 31, 1945, organizational meeting of People's Songs. Seeger's model was Great Britain's Workers Music Association, founded in 1939 by members of England's Communist Party. With the war over and now back in civilian life, he dreamed of expanding the Almanacs' ideals into a national movement that would unify singers, performers, choral leaders and labor unions into a force for political and social change. 1 or Pete Seeger's Greatest Hits will serve as solid choices.Pete Seeger never abandoned the original vision of the Almanac Singers. For those unfamiliar with Seeger or searching for a more representative collection of his songs, either American Favorite Ballads, Vol. Milquetoast versions of "East Virginia," "Saint James Hospital," and "John Hardy" sound like outtakes from an overlong box set. The overall selection, however, is lackluster. Its 23 selections and 65-minute running time are generous, and a number of tracks - "Coal Creek March" and "The Bourgeois Blues" - were recorded before vibrant live audiences (perhaps at the Newport Folk Festival). It isn't that The Essential Pete Seeger is a bad collection. He's also frequently performed numbers like "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies," "I Shall Not Be Moved," and "Oh What a Beautiful City." But other essentials like "The Hammer Song" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" - perhaps his most essential songs - haven't been included. Many of the songs, including "The Bells of Rhymney," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," and "Wimoweh," have long been associated with either Seeger or his group, the Weavers. Pete Seeger usually recorded for Folkways and Columbia, but this collection, recorded between 19, comes from Vanguard's vaults. The Essential Pete Seeger is an odd compilation.
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