Customer Reviews

We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pete Seeger is a mirror: you see yourself in him. If you're a child, you latch onto his easygoing voice and the humor evident in tunes like "A Little Brand New Baby" and "Little Boxes." If you're a teenager, you cling to the drama in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Who Killed Norma Jean?" If you're an adult--younger or elderly--you can appreciate the joy in life evinced by Seeger on every song on the album. It brings tears to my eyes nearly every time I listen to "Tshotsholosa," a Rhodesian road worker's song. Seeger's gift is to make every song a proclamation of the beauty of life and the wonder of other people. He is endlessly curious and polymathic--songs on this album include the traditional and the new, the English and the Portuguese, the German and the Spanish, the despairing and the overjoyed. Think of this album as a wistfully lovely time capsule in the few months before the 1960s finally exploded. It was recorded just five months before the assassination of JFK (one of Seeger's Harvard classmates) and just five years before the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. It simultaneously bears the innocent stamp of the 1950s without that decade's plastic falsity--and the righteous indignation of the 1960s without the tang of defeat that accompanied so many other things from that era.

Wow. 1963. Pete Seeger. According to "Music Hound's Guide to Folk", Seeger was in his prime when he performed this concert at Carnegie Hall. I'll say he was. He finds the emotion and fun in every song he sings and lets his voice soar. If he hasn't completely blown you away before, this recording will. This is the entire un-cut concert with audience applause, Pete's introductions (and mistakes), and it runs for over 2 hours. It's not the same as being there but it's pretty darn close. Listen to it on the best system you can find, make your self comfortable and transport back in time to 1963. This is why Pete Seeger is the Father of modern Folk.

Pete Seeger is the most essential folk artist ever. This album proves that. It starts off with Seeger and his banjo, but moves quickly to the songs that made him popular. He also does a few Bob Dylan tunes, including a wonderful version of "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall." The second disc includes many familiar songs, including "This Land Is Your Land," "We Shall Overcome," and his signature song "Guantanamera." It also includes a number of introductions and conversation with the audience. The original album only had a small portion of this concert. Having the whole show enables a person to hear the magic. Simply one of the best folk albums ever released.

This may be one of the most influential albums of the past two or three generations. Pete introduced "We Shall Overcome" to the civil rights movement. How can anyone top the impact of that song on our sensiblities ? He has always been modest about fame, being more interested in the message of the music in helping make a better world. And the other songs of the peace movement. Turn Turn Turn, Where have All the Flowers Gone?, and so many others that many of us know, but few know that he penned. He influenced Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and so many others. It is hard to underestimate the impact of this fine person no matter what his flaws might be. He has a way of seducing an audience with music of the people and then when they are comfortable, he slips in the message of struggle and change and the importance of making an effort. This is Pete's great achievement and this album is the essence of the 60's and so much that was good about the era. He is the good father to all of us and teaches dignity and honor. Did you know he was blacklisted by McCarthy? That he would not testify against his fellow artists? What a night that must have been at Carnegie Hall in 1963.

This is not just an essential recording for any Pete Seeger fan - this is a recording that should be required listening in every school in America. The songs Pete performed that night in 1963 touched on what's right with America, what needed changing and how we could begin to understand that we're all interdependent on one small planet. When I first listened to this recording I was reminded how this concert and the original LP were the first opportunity for most of the world to hear songs like "We Shall Overcome" In essence, it captured the seeds of the major events that would occur later in the 60's and beyond to this day. The songs on this recording are as relevant today as they were in 1963.

I've owned the LP version of this concert since it was released and it literally changed my life from the first time I removed the shrink-wrap and put it on my turntable, but this complete concert recording is a far better experience with many additional songs and much of the feel of being at a Pete Seeger concert.

Back in the mid-1950's I attended a summer camp in New Hampshire for 5 years. For most of those years, sometime in the middle of the summer a tall, lanky redhead came striding up the camp's dirt road with two instrument cases slung across his back. He'd stay with us for 10 days or so, and every night we'd meet in the rec hall or by the lake and he'd teach us songs and sing with us. There was a small group of us who played instruments like guitar or (in my case, at that point) mandolin, and he'd meet with us and teach us. All I knew about him was that his name was Pete, that he had an amazing and inspiring, trumpet-like voice, infectious optimism and charisma, and that we all sang alot better when we was there than when he wasn't.

I had no idea who Pete was, what his last name was, or anything more about him until my 4th year at camp, when my counselor, who was a banjo player, filled me in (and refused to play in front of Pete because he was embarrassed). "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall" had just come out, and I got that album and lo and behold, most of those songs were ones we'd learned from Pete and there was that amazing voice, that banjo, the driving rhythms, and the charismatic presence bringing people together to sing better than they ever knew they could. Pete was blacklisted then, and made his living going from schools to colleges to summer camps; there were many kids like me who grew up with Pete's warm and human influence.

Any recording of a Pete Seeger concert will give you an inkling of what it was like to be with him, but this one is special -- it's complete, it's long, it's very human, and it catches Pete at the height of the folk music revival and before the crucible of the late-1960's. It's all here. I suspect you'll find yourself singing along, stamping your feet, and at the end feeling a lot better about yourself, more committed to making life better for yourself and others, and more optimistic about this world. That's the hallmark of Pete's humanity. He wanted people to be involved, he disliked passive media like TV and recordings, and he played and inspired his audiences like an extension of his beloved banjo and guitar.

Yes, Pete was a member of the Communist Party from 1941 to 1949, but whether his songs after 1949 reflect, or were driven by, his affiliation (as another reviewer suggests) is, I believe, incorrect. Pete's songs were always guided much more by his native optimism, his love of people and the planet, his belief that songs and singing can somehow make a difference, his curiosity and openness, his response to the events around him (which actually made him more radical as he (and we) progressed through the 60's and 70's) and, yes, his open-hearted humanity.

No matter what your affiliation, and even if you've never heard a folk-song record in your life, you deserve to hear this one and let your spirit soar.

This is a classic folk music album. With Pete Seeger (the best folksinger ever created), Seeger's integrity when he sings, the entire concert (the original album was about 35 minutes) and a compilation of 60's folk songs, traditional folk, civil rights songs, and music from other countries, this album is a compilation of great music. There is also spirit which is enthusiastic for both Seeger and the integrated audience. This is Pete Seeger's all-time best album. A classic.

I've loved this album since a friend introduced it to me in ninth grade, nearly fourteen years ago. It's a great mix of Seeger classics: audience participation songs like "Sweet Potatoes" (with surprisingly good harmony), anti-war songs, civil rights songs. One of the best things about the live-in-concert aspect to the album, besides the vitality that comes through the sometimes shaky recording, is that you hear Seeger giving some credit to the people who wrote, sang, and suffered these songs before he popularized them. That acknowledgment does a lot to boost his credibility as a civil rights advocate. A few of the songs sound dated, but most of them still resonate.

Pete Seeger, is a "one-off". An exceptional talent and a great human being. We need to be listening to his music today. It is still as important and relevant as when he was touring America and giving concerts like this one.
I first heard and fell in love with his style and message in the mid 1960s, on vinyl LPs. I loved his music and his message. So did Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many others. Pete, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, The Weavers were important influences on Dylan and Baez, and many others. Their messages and active involvement in important social and political issues of their day had a great influence. Unfortunately it is still relevant today.
Please keep this wonderful music available to today's generation and future ones too. Eventually humankind 'might' get the message. I hope so.

This album taps directly into my childhood, like "mac & cheese". My father must have played it ten-thousand times on a little phonograph that he'd build himself, with a balsa-wood tone arm and washers on the back to give it the ounce of weight it needed for the stereo cartridge he'd bought. Ten-thousand times is conservative. Maybe fifty-thousand. I can lip-sync not just the songs, but the intros to the songs.

Seeger is an inspiration. He is a national treasure. I hear his voice, and I start to cry. I hear this album, and it moves me afresh to go out and get involved. He was an amazing poet, civil rights leader, and patriot, and this is his best work.