(MANDATORY CREDIT Ebet Roberts/Getty Photos) Pete Seeger on the Harry Chapin Present at Carnegie Corridor … [+]
An American folks music legend is getting his personal postage stamp.
America Postal Service has issued a Forever commemorative stamp Thursday honoring the late folks singer and activist Pete Seeger—the most recent addition to the company’s Music Icons stamp collection.
The Seeger stamp will likely be devoted at a first-day challenge ceremony Thursday night on the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport, Rhode Island—town the place the famed Newport Folks Competition, which was co-founded by Seeger, is held yearly. A live performance will comply with the ceremony.
The stamp picture depicting the singer is from a photograph taken by his son, Dan Seeger, within the early Sixties.
The brand new Pete Seeger stamp, a part of the USPS’ Music Icons collection.
In a press launch, the Postal Service stated: “Pete Seeger (1919-2014) promoted the unifying energy of voices joined in tune to deal with social points. His adaptation of “We Shall Overcome” grew to become a civil rights anthem. Led by his ringing tenor voice and emblematic five-string banjo, his sing-along concert events blended conventional songs and Seeger originals like “If I Had a Hammer” and “Flip! Flip! Flip!” Throughout his lengthy profession, the charismatic and idealistic performer grew to become a folks hero to generations.”
Born in New York City on May 3, 1919, Seeger got here from a musical background; his father Charles Seeger was a musicologist and his stepmother was an avant-garde composer. After dropping out of Harvard in 1938, Seeger pursued folks music and met key figures in the genre similar to Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie and Lead Stomach. “The phrases that got here out of his mouth and the music he made all flowed along with the life that he had led,” Seeger told NPR’s Contemporary Air in 1985 about Guthrie, “and I used to be significantly drawn to it and sort of tagged alongside after him for a number of months. Woody confirmed me how one can hitchhike and how one can experience freight trains, how one can sing in saloons.”
In 1948, Seeger based the folks group the Weavers with Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman. The Weavers achieved fame with hit songs similar to “On Prime of Outdated Smokey” and “Good Evening, Irene,” however the group disbanded in 1952 after they have been blacklisted amid the anti-Communist backlash (The Weavers’ reunion in 1980 was documented within the movie Wasn’t {That a} Time, launched two years later).
Seeger wrote such well-known songs as “The place Have All of the Flowers Gone,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Flip! Flip! Flip!,” the latter which grew to become an enormous hit for the rock group the Byrds in 1965. His rendition of “We Shall Overcome” grew to become the anthem of the Civil Rights Motion through the Sixties. All through his life, he stood behind progressive causes from labor rights to the surroundings.
The singer has been considered an influence on such artists as Bob Dylan, Rage Towards the Machine’s Tom Morello, and Bruce Springsteen, who recorded the 2006 album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions that consisted of songs popularized by Seeger.
Among the many awards and recognitions Seeger acquired embody the Kennedy Heart Honors, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Corridor of Fame, and the George Peabody medal.
Former President Barack Obama paid tribute to Seeger following the singer’s loss of life on January 27, 2014: “As soon as referred to as ‘America’s tuning fork,’ Pete Seeger believed deeply within the energy of tune. However extra importantly, he believed within the energy of group. To face up for what’s proper, communicate out in opposition to what’s flawed, and transfer this nation nearer to the America he knew we might be.”
In a 2010 interview with the Journal Information, Seeger mentioned: “In my very own life, (music) has been capable of leap limitations that phrases can not leap. Very often, individuals discuss to one another and discover themselves so livid, they cannot keep in the identical room with one another. However music can leap over these limitations of race or faith and politics.”
Along with Seeger, the opposite musicians who’ve been commemorated within the USPS’ Music Icons collection embody Johnny Money, Ray Charles, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Lydia Mendoza, Sarah Vaughan, Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix.
