Mike Seeger Explained

Mike Seeger
Background:solo_singer
Birth Date:1933 8, mf=yes
Birth Place:New York City
Death Place:Lexington, Virginia, U.S.
Origin:New York City, New York, U.S.

Mike Seeger (August 15, 1933August 7, 2009) was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who mainly played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.[1] He was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2018.[2]

Early life

Seeger was born in New York and grew up in Maryland and Washington D.C. His father, Charles Louis Seeger Jr., was a composer and pioneering ethnomusicologist, investigating both American folk and non-Western music. His mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a composer.[3] His eldest half-brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older half-brother, John Seeger, taught for years at the Dalton School in Manhattan. His next older half brother was Pete Seeger. His uncle, Alan Seeger, the poet who wrote "I have a rendezvous with Death", was killed during the First World War. Seeger was a self-taught musician who began playing stringed instruments at the age of 18. He also sang Sacred Harp with British folk singer Ewan MacColl and his son, Calum. Seeger's sister Peggy Seeger, also a well-known folk performer, married MacColl, and his sister Penny wed John Cohen, a member of Mike's musical group, New Lost City Ramblers.[4]

The family moved to Washington D.C. in 1936 after his father's appointment to the music division of the Resettlement Administration. While in Washington D.C., Ruth Seeger worked closely with John and Alan Lomax at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress to preserve and teach American folk music. Ruth Seeger's arrangements and interpretations of American Traditional folk songs in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s are well regarded.

Musical career

At about the age of 20, Mike Seeger began collecting songs by traditional musicians on a tape recorder. Folk musicians such as Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, John Jacob Niles, and others were frequent guests in the Seeger home.[5] [6]

In 1958 he co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers, an old-time string band in New York City, during the Folk Revival. The other founding members included John Cohen and Tom Paley. Paley later left the group in 1962 and was replaced by Tracy Schwarz. The New Lost City Ramblers directly influenced countless musicians in subsequent years. The Ramblers distinguished themselves by focusing on the traditional playing styles they heard on old 78rpm records of musicians recorded during the 1920s and 1930s.

Seeger received six Grammy nominations and was the recipient of four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,[5] including a 2009 National Heritage Fellowship, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.[7] His influence on the folk scene was described by Bob Dylan in his autobiography, . He was a popular presenter and performer at traditional music gatherings such as Breakin' Up Winter.

Eight days before his 76th birthday, Mike Seeger died at his home in Lexington, Virginia, on August 7, 2009, after stopping cancer treatment.[8] [9]

The Mike Seeger Collection, which includes original sound and video recordings by Mike Seeger, is located in the Southern Folklife Collection of the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[10]

Discography

Recordings with the New Lost City Ramblers

Selected films featuring Mike Seeger

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: National Endowment for the Arts, National Heritage Fellowships. Mike Seeger: Musician, Cultural Scholar, and Advocate. Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellowship. National Endowment for the Arts. 2009. August 8, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20100602034751/http://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=2009_10. June 2, 2010. mdy-all.
  2. Web site: Recipient History . . 2023 . International Bluegrass Music Association . February 25, 2024.
  3. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=990CE6D81E31E233A2575AC1A9649D946096D6CF 1911 New York Times wedding announcement for Charles Louis Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger
  4. http://weeklywire.com/ww/08-18-97/austin_music_feature3.html A Vision Shared, Austin Chronicle, weeklywire.com, 18 August 1997
  5. News: Mike Seeger: American folk revivalist and historian . 2007 . Smithsonian Global Sound . Smithsonian Institution . August 8, 2009 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090523015500/http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/feature_21A.aspx . May 23, 2009 .
  6. Web site: True Vine Smithsonian Folkways. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. 28 July 2017.
  7. Web site: NEA National Heritage Fellowships 2009 . . www.arts.gov . National Endowment for the Arts . January 16, 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200928023511/https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/year/2009 . September 28, 2020 . dead.
  8. News: Mike Seeger Cleared Paths, Showed Us The Way. NPR Music. Paul. Brown. National Public Radio. August 8, 2009. August 9, 2009.
  9. News: Folk Music's Mike Seeger Dead. NPR Music. Paul. Brown. National Public Radio. August 8, 2009. August 9, 2009.
  10. Web site: Mike Seeger Collection, 1923-2010 (bulk 1955-2002). finding-aids.lib.unc.edu. 2017-11-06.

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