“To Everything There Is a Season”: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song (review)

In his concise study of the life and career of Pete Seeger, “To Everything There Is a Season”: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song, Allan M. Winkler (Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University in Ohio) suggests that Seeger was the central figure in the American urban folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s—not Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, or any of the other people closely associated with that revival. While some readers of American Music might disagree with such an assessment, Winkler’s book lucidly demonstrates to the uninitiated that Seeger was not only a major influence during the urban folk revival but also among its most important participants.

This contextualized biographical study of the folksinger is part of Oxford University Press’s New Narratives in American History Series. Generally convincing in its exploration of Seeger’s central role in the American folksong movement, Winkler’s book illustrates how Seeger, from the 1930s to the present day, has used traditional songs and ballads—as well as original compositions adapted from folk material—as catalysts for positive social change. While comprising barely 200 pages (even with a comparatively long notes section), Winkler’s book successfully conveys key moments in Seeger’s very public life; the book is less concerned with his psychological and spiritual concerns or with his identity as musician and folklorist. Indeed, Winkler downplays—and at times oversimplifies—the complexity of Seeger’s achievement as performing musician and songwriter. In many respects, Winkler’s book echoes the focus on Seeger found in two previous works: David King Dunaway’s How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger (Villard, 2008, in an updated version of Dunaway’s 1981 Seeger biography) and Alec Wilkinson’s The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger (Knopf, 2009). (Readers seeking a more overtly musicological analysis of Seeger’s art must wait for a future scholar to pursue that task.) While scholars of the urban folk revival might deem “To Everything There Is a Season” as revisiting familiar ground (indeed, the notes section suggests that Dunaway’s book was a significant information source), Winkler’s book will appeal to younger readers who might not know much about Seeger beyond the fact that he inspired Bruce Springsteen’s 2006 album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

Providing a generally reliable overview of Seeger’s story, “To Everything There Is a Season” is particularly effective when discussing Seeger’s appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In Winkler’s straightforward assessment (devoid of legal jargon and plausibly presenting the folksinger’s motivations), Seeger—unlike many other alleged Communist sympathizers—was unfazed when appearing before that committee in 1955, unapologetically acknowledging that “I make my living as a banjo picker” (79) and boldly asserting to the committee that “I am not going to answer any questions as to my associations, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this” (79). Publicly charged with contempt of Congress, Seeger eventually received a federal grand jury’s punitive reprimand of ten guilty verdicts. Exonerated in 1962 after the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out his original sentence, Seeger emerged as a “hero” of one of the more embarrassing chapters in American political history.

Despite his clear affection for his subject, Winkler confronts some of Seeger’s less dignified moments. For instance, he discusses a well-known episode of generational misunderstanding. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, after Bob Dylan plugged in his electric guitar and performed one of his songs backed by the amplified Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Seeger, unsuccessfully commanding the soundman to lower the sound level, said in frustration, “Damn...