How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger [Paperback]

David King Dunaway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2008

How Can I Keep from Singing? is the compelling story of how the son of a respectable Puritan family became a consummate performer and American rebel. Updated with new research and interviews, unpublished photographs, and thoughtful comments from Pete Seeger himself, this is an inside history of the man Carl Sandburg called “America’s Tuning Fork.” In the only biography on Seeger, David Dunaway parts the curtains on his life.

Who is this rail-thin, eighty-eight-year-old with the five-string banjo, whose performances have touched millions of people for more than seven decades? Bob Dylan called him a saint. Joan Baez said, “We all owe our careers to him.” But Seeger’s considerable musical achievements were overshadowed by political controversy when he became perhaps the most blacklisted performer in American history. He was investigated for sedition, harassed by the FBI and the CIA, picketed, and literally stoned by conservative groups. Still, he sang.
Today, Seeger remains an icon of conscience and culture, and his classic antiwar songs, sung by Bruce Springsteen and millions of others, live again in the movement against foreign wars. His life holds lessons for surviving repressive times and for turning to music to change the world.

“This biography is a beauty. It captures not only the life of the bard but the world of which he sings.”
–Studs Terkel

“A fine and meticulous biography . . . Dunaway has taken [Seeger’s] materials and woven them into a detailed, interesting, and well-written narrative of a most fascinating life.”
–American Music

“An extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man [that] will intrigue not only his legions of followers but everyone interested in one man’s battles and victories.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Villard (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345506081
• ISBN-13: 978-0345506085
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Be Advised -- with a biographer like this, who needs enemies?, March 25, 2009

By 

Harold Kirkpatrick (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger (Paperback)

David King Dunaway's biography is valuable, but be advised, the author is no friend of folk music and is patronizing to Pete Seeger. In this he echoes the attitude of 1950s U.S. Cold War academic political science departments to folk music and folk musicians. Dunaway writes: "In the twenty-first century, the appeal of Pete Seeger is akin to that of a nineteenth-century Romantic figure, the rustic innocent with the magic flute, who appeals to those unable to live fully for the frantic quality of their lives," p. 421.

The book falls short as an explanation of Seeger's politics and does little to enlighten readers about the appeal of his music, since the author has no curiosity about the former and is lacking in knowledge about the latter.

There are also many very nasty comments in this book about other figures in the folk singing world, effectively unattributed, since the notes at the end are merely general attributions for each chapter without specifically stating who said what. Nor is there any attempt to interpret or give a context for these inflamatory remarks.

Dunaway is also inaccurate. He gets wrong the name of Seeger's nemesis Karl Joachim Friedrich (the teacher of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski). The German-born Friedrich, a political scientist who was an adviser to the US military on propaganda during World War 2, was violently opposed to populist movements and wrote an article about Seeger and the Almanac Singers in the Atlantic Monthly in 1941, calling them "the Poison in Our System." Dunaway misspells the name of this writer as Carl Frederick, as though he were just a random writer and not a highly influential Cold War figure.

Dunaway also mis-attributes the authorship of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" to George Gershwin and claims (implausibly) that Seeger had to conceal his liking for this song from his classical music-loving parents.

Finally, Dunaway spends much too much time on what neo-conservatives like David Hadju, David Horowitz, and David Boas (of the Cato Institute) had to say about Pete Seeger in the 1990s, giving these writers, who have little to do with music or folk music, way too much weight and respect.

In other words, with a friendly biographer like Dunaway, Pete Seeger doesn't need any enemies.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Biography of a Great American, August 8, 2008

By 

J. Capaldi (Springfield, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger (Paperback)

David King Dunaway has done a wonderful job in updating his classic biography of Pete Seeger. Dunaway, with excellent narrative skill, tells not only Seeger's life story, but also gives us a mini-history of the progressive movement in this country for the last eighty years or so. Seeger's involvement in the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the environmental movement are all covered in depth. Also the struggle to be able to sing his songs in a supposedly free America is explored in the tales related to the riots at Peekskill, the McCarthy era, the blacklist, and right-wing bigots picketing his concerts.

The best part of all of this is that Pete Seeger, at age 89, is still actively writing and singing. I had the pleasure to see him in concert, along with his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, and Guy Davis two nights ago at the Sellersville Theater. He can still get a crowd to sing along with him. While his voice is perhaps not what it used to be (but as Arlo Guthrie told him "neither is our hearing"), the magic is still there.

This book captures as much of that magic as the printed page can hold, and is a great book for people of all ages to read. I highly recommend it if you are interested in reading about a real, authentic, inspiring American hero.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Story of a true good American, May 10, 2008

By 

Thomas Hofer (Morgan City, LA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger (Paperback)

Since 1971, I have been a fan of Joan Baez, whose anti-war songs I liked, and still like. At the same time, I had a friend who was a fan of Bob Dylan. Often, when I visited my friend, we would first play Joan Baez and then Bob Dylan. (Unfortunately, my friend died in 2004.) He and I were knowledgeable in folk music and soft rock. At one point,in the late 90's, I asked him if he knew of a good version of the song "Down By The Riverside", and he recommended the version sung by Pete Seeger. I am not joking when I write this, but this is the first time I had ever heard of Seeger. Of course, I bought a CD with that song, and it turned out to be part of the album LIVE AT NEWPORT and is very well done. I also learned that both Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were influenced and inspired by Pete Seeger, as were Peter, Paul, and Mary, of whom my late wife was a fan. This in turn made me develop an interest in Pete Seeger and his life and work. When I learned of this book, I decided to buy it, and have just finished reading it. It is one of the best biographies I have ever read. Pete Seeger is described as courageous and steadfast, even under the most difficult of circumstances. The book describes how he is literally persecuted by Joe McCarthy and company as well as the J.-Edgar-Hoover-run-FBI. Of course, it becomes evident that Joe McCarthy is a senseless witch hunter, and that J. Edgar Hoover runs the FBI as if it were his own private property and business (which indeed he did). Seeger stands tall at all times, is not intimidated, and eventually makes a great name for himself as a musician. He earns the like of his fans and, of course, singers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan who are full of praise for him. Indeed, his life is a ballad which goes on and on for the cause of harmony and peace. Seeger stands tall to this very day, as the book clearly describes.