Friday, January 31, 2014

Pete Seeger died on Monday...

...and according to his obit in the Times (my emphasis):

Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Was this guy prolific, or what?

Here's one of my favorite versions of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” by the Byrds. (I saw Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark play this at my first concert in 1976 or '77.)

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