Pete Seegar has died at the age of ninety-four. As a teen-age high school student , I heard him in concert at Town Hall in New York City perhaps sixty-five years ago. He gave a rousing rendition of The Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase , a marvelous virtuoso banjo piece that I can still hear in my mind today. He and Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly defined politically inspired folk music for me. So few of the old minstrels remain true to their political commitments throughout their lives. That, more than anything else is for me the mark of true greatness.
Ninety - four. A good age.
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"So few of the old minstrels remain true to their political commitments throughout their lives. That, more than anything else is for me the mark of true greatness."
What a wonderful measure of greatness!
What I like to call a long-distance runner.
Consistently a mensch.
(I remember well my sister's LP of his which included a real oddity, The Ballad of Sigmund Freud. It also included the great Banks are made of Marble). Here are the lyrics to the former:
Well, it started in Vienna not so many years ago
When not enough folks were getting sick
A starving young physician tried to better his position
By discovering what made his patients tick
He forgot about sterosis and invented the psychosis
And a hundred ways that sex could be enjoyed
He adopted as his credo "down repression of libido!"
And that was the start of Doctor Sigmund Freud
Well, Doctor Freud, oh Doctor Freud
How we wish you had been differently employed
But the set of circumstances
Still enhances the finances
of the followers of Doctor Sigmund Freud
Well, he analyzed the dreams of the teens and libertines
Substituted monologue for pills
He drew crowds just like Will Sadler
When along came Jung and Adler
And they said by God, there's gold in them there ills!
They encountered no resistance
When they served as Freud's assistants
As with ego and with id they deftly toyed
But instead of toting bedpans
They wore analytic deadpans
Those ambitious doctors Adler, Jung and Freud!
Well, Doctor Freud, oh Doctor Freud
How we wish you had been differently employed
But the set of circumstances
Still enhances the finances
of the followers of Doctor Sigmund Freud
Now the big three have departed
But not so the code the started
No, it's being carried on by a goodly band
And to trauma shock and force us
Someone's gone and added Rorschach
And the whole thing's got completely out of hand!
So old boys with double chinsies
And a thousand would-be Kinseys
They discuss it at the drop of a repression
And I wouldn't be complaining
But for all the loot I'm paying
Just to lie on someone's couch and say confession!
Well, Doctor Freud, oh Doctor Freud
How we wish you had been differently employed
But the set of circumstances
Still enhances the finances
of the followers of Doctor Sigmund Freud
What a hoot! I know The Banks Are Made of Marble ( with a guard at every door) but I never heard the Greud ditty. Lord, he was wonderful.
To the old Greeks, the mark of excellence in a philosopher was that he lived up to the values of his philosophy. First, know thyself -- but then live it too. Seeger is immortal.
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