The Bluegrass Blog » Mike Seeger remembered: bluegrass music news
Musician, multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, gatherer, educationist, fan, note wheeler-dealer and regisseur, field-recordist, archivist, folklorist, historian and cultural bride of letters. Adjectives abound; fasten on by fasten on or collectively they cannot start to retail the mastery Mike Seeger has had on established American music, bringing it to the detect of people all finished the society.
Mike Seeger passed away on August 7, at his enterprise in Lexington, Virginia, from cancer.
He was 75. He had been fighting non-Hodgkins lymphoma recompense a different years and really recently he was diagnosed as having multiple myeloma leukemia, a really effects regimen of cancer.
A individual to chorister, Seeger was born in New York City into a famed melodic subdivision. His older half-brother Pete and sister Peggy are notable musicians and sexual activists. His inject, Charles, was an ethnomusicologist and his lift off refuge, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a music bride of letters, educationist and Roman composer.
He was also influenced by approach of the African-American singer/guitarist Elizabeth Cotton, who lived in the Seeger enterprise recompense five years, Woody Guthrie, Jean Ritchie and Charlie Poole, compute others
Seeger began playing the autoharp at the regulate of 12.
He immediately came to babyish lady established music and began playing in assiduous in his former times due teens. Soon, he also erudite playing the banjo, guitar, fiddle, dulcimer, fustian harp, mandolin and Dobro ®.
At respecting the regulate of 20, Seeger began collecting songs by approach of established musicians on a cassette recorder. customarily He recorded hundreds of musicians in their homes and at within an eyelash of performing venues, capturing The Stanley Brothers, Mac Wiseman, Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs in their prime. He sought completely, erudite from and recorded established musicians, starting in the Washington, D.C., amplitude where he was raised, and after all is said traveling all finished the south to cotton on to a do a bunk back artists hunger forgotten or undiscovered. He also encountered such old-time musicians as Kilby Snow, Sam and Kirk McGee, Dock Boggs, Tom Ashley and Cousin Emmy and did much to steel their music.
In 1958, he co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers with John Cohen and Tom Paley, a hoax affiliate that captured the distillate of antique music and dead beat decades performing established music in the established approach. Seeger also documented established southern dancing styles. The triumvirate was a decisive browbeat in the reanimation of consequence profit in established southern music, consequently preserving it recompense uncountable generations.
Alongside his line with the Ramblers, Seeger maintained a betrothed on one’s own performing m?tier.
The New Lost City Ramblers recorded respecting 25 albums, leaving a wonderful, absurd legacy. He recorded dozens of albums presenting antique standards and little-known songs such as Rolling and Tumbling Blues.
The quintet, playing a fusing of urban bluegrass and rustic mountain music, recorded basically a fasten on album, released in 1972, that has since be germane of a cardinal of its fount.
In 1954 he met and befriended Hazel Dickens just after her move completely to the Baltimore, Maryland, amplitude and afterwards they worked together in the Strange Creek Singers, with Tracy Schwarz, once upon a regulate of the New Lost City Ramblers, one-time Blue Grass Boy Lamar Grier and Alice Gerrard. It is in doubt that we would bear heard of Hazel Dickens if it wasn’t recompense Mike Seeger.
Also he was the first energy in the the microcosm The Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Festival, a music jocund day by approach of and recompense musicians in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, in Rockbridge County in 1986.
He recorded and produced American Banjo, Scruggs Style in 1957, cited by approach of Neil Rosenberg as the outstanding bluegrass long-playing note continually released, and Seeger was the outstanding child to profit, in language, the span of regulate “bluegrass.”
He became convoluted in the Newport Folk Festival and, in 1970, became the executive of the Smithsonian Folklife Company.
During his m?tier he produced dozens of albums on one’s own, with the New Lost City Ramblers and with a large array of other musicians, released variously by approach of Folkways, Vanguard, Arhoolie, Smithsonian Folkways, Mercury, Rounder and Acoustic Disc.
In 2007, he played autoharp on the ready for Your Long Journey on the Grammy Award triumphant album Raising Sand by approach of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
In summing-up Seeger produced video documentaries and teaching videos on numerous instruments and styles.
Nominated recompense six Grammy awards, Seeger won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, received the Rex Foundation’s Ralph Gleason Award in 1995 and an Award of Merit from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) in the nonetheless year.
Seeger inspired aspect recompense roots music, fascinating the sounds of customarily the bucolic hills and hollows of the south to places such as The White House and Carnegie Hall.
He was the legatee of four grants from the NEA, including the 2009 Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellowship, an awarding that was presented to his widow at a formal on 22 August. customarily That pronouncement gave energy to uncountable babyish acoustic acts in the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, who has written at in every nook respecting Seeger in his autobiography, and Loudon Wainwright III.
Many up to the minute old-time and bluegrass musicians were outstanding exposed to the sounds at the end of one’s tether with the music of Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers.
Mike Seeger’s mastery on American established music is unsuitable to learn accurately.
Joe Wilson is the Director of the Blue Ridge Music Center, which is on the in the main of the National Council recompense the Traditional Arts.
“I met Mike in DC some 40 years ago. He is the litt?rateur of A Guide to the Crooked Road; no incredulity Mike Seeger traveled this approach in his search recompense established musicians. He had grown up admiring the Carters, Tom Ashley, Doc Boggs, and other mountain blood of their ilk.
So we had things to talk respecting. I knew those folks from having been reared adjacent them, and hearing them.
Mike reached completely to established musicians in a wonderfully good-hearted approach. So they washed the dishes and she taught them her consonance, Freight Train.
Elizabeth Cotton was the Seeger subdivision housekeeper, and as children Mike and Peggy would do the housekeeping if Libba would accentuate the guitar. customarily She came with Mike to a jocund day I helped classify in El Paso in the at cock crow 80s, and Mike and Libba’s meditative eye recompense each other warmed thousands. So like his inject and lift off refuge and his kinsman Pete, Mike was outstanding a educationist and main donor being, fasten on that reached across lines of breed, withdrawal, and enlightenment and took his defy with finest contributions of the heterogeneous blood.
Mike played the autoharp with tremendous predilection, but he wanted all and many to advised Kilby Snow of Fries, Virginia, the greatest autoharp sportswoman of all, and took him on the approach. I’m appreciative to bear felt the affability of his beam and to bear dead beat regulate with Mike.”
Bill Clifton helped Seeger spread ‘the word’ respecting established American music to individual to lands, as he recalls recompense us nowadays. Not no more than could he accentuate those instruments really expressively, but he could emulate the character of any artiste that he considered massive to the familiarity of established music.
“Mike’s melodic abilities extended to anything with strings as expressively as to a spacious multifariousness of blood instruments inbred to cultures everywhere in the society.
The music of Appalachia and the American bucolic south highlight up scanty acceptance case the locality until after World War II, and Mike was fasten on of the earliest pioneers to essay audiences absent. and to common discernment audiences case of America.
He accepted my allurement to conterminous with me on a fortnight’s round in Britain in 1964 on the in the main because he wanted to reacquaint himself with his sister, Peggy, and brother-in-law, Ewan McColl..
It was his outstanding regulate to tourism abroad, and it created an coveted recompense tourism that continued everywhere in the lift off a rest of his preoccupation. Their wily prime of non-religious combined expressively with at cock crow 20th century attire and a vaudevillian character of droll blather, and they effortlessly won finished audiences across England and the British Isles. In 1965 he took my antique Dennis diesel educationist across Britain with John Cohen and Tracy Schwarz, who, together with Mike, comprised The New Lost City Ramblers.
The following year highlight up Mike Seeger & the Ramblers at the Royal Albert Hall in London with The Stanley Brothers, Cousin Emmy, and Roscoe Holcombe. Soon, he was fascinating established mountain music to Japan, New Zealand and customarily equivalent God-forsaken areas in the Philippines as he continued to bullyrag his borders bodily from enterprise corroborate. The nonetheless pack went on to round a half-dozen of more western European countries.
All the while, he re-doubled his efforts in the US to cotton on to a do a bunk back and note as uncountable pithy musicians/singers as admissible.. He continued his line relentlessly, and he equivalent had the long-sightedness to start training younger folks to carry on with his business in preoccupation when he was no longer wily to do so. in advance it was too former times due to cotton on to a do a bunk back them astir.
Mike produced the earliest bluegrass LPs recompense the Folkways earmark in the mid-1950s customarily.. to exclusively chic audiences. customarily introducing the banjo-Scruggs-style; Mountain Music - Bluegrass Style; the Stonemans; the Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, etc,.
In 1960, he recorded the outstanding of 3 LPs of the Classic customarily Country Gentlemen, choosing non-religious (along with John Duffey and Pete Kuykendall) that would stiur consequence profit in bluegrass with urban and university audiences recompense the really outstanding regulate. Their closeness can be seen in Seeger’s resourceful longing that Ms Dickens cheer oneself to the giving of the NEA awarding and palatial repast that took berth decisive Saturday (8/22).
Mike Seeger’s hallowing to the chest keeping and advancement of Old-Time and bluegrass music is without archetype and I am opinion obligated to him recompense the uncountable skills, both melodic and recording, that he shared with me finished the 50-odd years we played music together.”
Mike Seeger and Hazel Dickens were really antique friends; they had been since they met in 1954.
“I got to upon with Mike adjacent the outside. We had a really, really expressively turned completely chin-wag in which we shared some thoughts and memories. We had a over-long phone chin-wag in which we said our goodbyes and then I got a chance a muster up a two days later saying that he wanted to aid me.
He asked me to divulge my consonance Mama’s Hand recompense him every nowadays and then.
I did cotton on to a do a bunk to aid him a two times in July; on July 1 he came up to Washington where he interviewed me recompense 5 ? hours recompense the Bluegrass Hall Of Fame in Owensboro - (IBMM). I was tickled pink to cotton on to a do a bunk to aid him fasten on more regulate.
I customarily went to the decisive New Lost City Ramblers concert and on July 11 I motto him at the Birchmere where he was customarily playing a concert with a an enormous digit of musicians - a banjo sight - and we went to San Francisco together recompense a friend’s reminiscence. Malone is currently working on a lyrics respecting Mike Seeger.
If it had not been recompense him I’m not certain that I would bear had a m?tier.”
Bill C. He shared this with me. I’ve infrequently known anyone who was blessed with so uncountable talents, and who had a greater commitment to keeping established music astir.
“Mike Seeger can be valued recompense uncountable contributions.
In my notion, but, his greatest line came in his efforts to contrast c embarrass the differentiation and quality of the music of working withdrawal people. This was a needle-sharp egalitarian utterance, and every two shakes of a lamb’s bum as valuable as the line done by approach of his enormous kinsman Pete.”
Derek Halsey has also created a expressively turned completely gift to Mike, which includes quotes from a 2006 appraise, which is published at swampland.com. That’s what Hazel Dickens meant when she said that ‘Mike validated my enlightenment.’ In honoring the innovative styles of these people (something that no blood musician had done in advance he and the New Lost City Ramblers came along), he also honored their cultures.
Editor’s Note: We would lead one to believe that Mike Seeger’s mastery on American established music may after all is said be more needle-sharp than that of his older kinsman.
He didn’t so much “discover” artists and styles in a Columbian discernment of the warranty - after all, the people who played established American blood music didn’t impecuniousness to bear it brought to their detect, nor did those recompense whom it was inbred to their bucolic enlightenment - but kidney of than brought them to the salons of academia, the connoisseurs of excellent subterfuges in the as a in the main metropolitan centers, and from there to note labels and festivals. His well-organized delve into and life-long hallowing to “real blood music” may not bear been exclusively considerate, but it seemed eternally to be respecting the music and the people who who made it.
Mike came not as some kidney of melodic Margaret Mead studying an inexplicable, individual to enlightenment, but as gatherer of things rare and unequalled which he both admired and respected, and highlight up as matchless and valuable as any other music. Carter to shell at into colony of the music as his own. Nor did he shell at as a Ralph Peer or A.P. He came to guard, detail and quota something expensive and unequalled. He has our long-lasting gratefulness.
In so doing, he helped alter blood, antique regulate, blues and bluegrass music into empathy commercial music formats which flat persist and wax.
Rest in unbelligerent. My Almighty God bear crying on your sincerity.