Seeger’s career and use of songs by famed black musician Lead Belly begs additional questions about race and music of celebrities in mid-century America. Singing in front of unions in the 1930s and 1940s (one of his most famous songs, in fact, “If I Had a Hammer,” was a song written in support of the progressive movement), did Seeger ever address segregation and the racial politics of the union? Winkler writes that Seeger, singing to unions, “wanted to encourage them to sing songs, new and old, that would make them feel part of an America that valued their contributions,” and yet he does not address the racial division and exclusion that existed in some unions at the time (p. When historians write monographs, should there be an imperative to have some kind of overarching meaning and analysis, that proverbial “big issue”? Seeger’s career presents a bounty of possible topics for further inquiry and interrogation that fall within the category of “big issues,” many of which deal with race. The book focuses more on Seeger’s politics, musical career, songs, and legacy with chapters devoted to union and labor songs, civil rights songs, Vietnam, and his time as a member of the Weavers musical group. His early life remains relatively untouched, except for some details about his father and musical background as well as such information as the fact that his parents were divorced and the frequently repeated fact that Seeger attended Harvard. To Everything There is a Season is not a personal, intimate biography of Seeger by any stretch of the imagination. Pete Seeger, according to Winkler, was the Johnny Appleseed of mid-century American folk music as he traveled the country and later internationally, with guitar and banjo in tow, in his simple desire to make the world a better place through music, one hootenanny at a time. Winkler forgoes this association in his recent work To Everything There is a Season.
Upon hearing the twang of the banjo, the average American mind might conjure images of the bizarre hillbillies in the infamous film Deliverance (1972), but historian Allan M. Reviewed by Nicole Frisone (University of Minnesota) New Narratives in American History Series. To Everything There Is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song.
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