Music from the True Vine: Mike Seeger’s Life & Musical Journey (review)

In his modest but significant biographical study of Mike Seeger (1933–2009), music historian Bill C. Malone admits that he was ambivalent when first meeting the musician in 1962. Acknowledging that Seeger as a young man already possessed “musical brilliance,” Malone was nonetheless suspicious: “[Seeger] seemed distant at best, or mildly arrogant at worst. Beyond that, I must confess that I was also skeptical of his intent and motivations. I was interested in his music, largely because I thought it was mine [Malone’s italics], but I believed that he and his pals in the New Lost City Ramblers were interlopers: they were dabbling in old-time music because they saw it as exotic or as a welcome relief from the urban culture that seemed stifling to many city youth in the late fifties and early sixties” (2). Malone assumed that Seeger and many of his middle-class, northern-born peers in the urban folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s “had romanticized the Appalachian South and ignored the rest of the region. These folkies seemed unwilling to recognize or explore the ways in which tradition had been readapted and reshaped in other less-romanticized parts of the nation” (5).

In 2003, both author and subject participated in a Carter Family symposium held in England, and shortly thereafter Malone began to conduct the interviews with Seeger that would form the core of Music from the True Vine. Malone now understood the degree to which he had initially been wrong about the musician, having mistaken Seeger’s seriousness and reticence for arrogance, and having misjudged Seeger’s self-confident passion toward Appalachian music as class-based romanticization of rural culture. Malone now realized that the musician’s entire career reflected a profound commitment to understanding, preserving, and celebrating one region and its musical heritage. This book, then, is warmly effusive of Malone’s newfound appreciation for Seeger.

Malone is primarily known for having written the first comprehensive history of country music, Country Music, U.S.A. (originally published in 1968 and recently republished in a third revised edition). True Vine is his first true single-subject biography (he co-wrote Hazel Dickens’s 2008 autobiography, Working Girl Blues), and it is interesting to witness how Malone applies his encyclopedic knowledge of music and proven research skills when exploring a more focused topic. The portrayal of Seeger in True Vine is commendably balanced, as Malone relates the musician’s public achievements (in terms of performance, folklore study, and cultural advocacy) while also conveying his private struggles (marital conflicts, prescription drug dependency, and illness). What renders the book relevant to a wide range of readers—whether or not they have ever heard of Mike Seeger—is its emphasis on placing the musician’s life into broader contexts. For instance, Malone explores Seeger’s interactions with members of his famous musical family, his participation in revivalist music scenes in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City, and his affiliations with a wide range of musicians across the United States.

Music from the True Vine traces Seeger’s transformation from outsider to insider, from cultural interpreter to culture bearer. In Malone’s assessment, Seeger after the dissolution of his second marriage yearned for a “rustic and meaningful life” (147) similar to the lives he had witnessed during his many performance and music collection forays into the Southern Appalachian mountains. Settling near Lexington, Virginia, in 1981, Seeger increasingly embodied the “role of elder statesman” (153) locally, regionally, and nationally. His passing in August 2009 prompted numerous tributes in the national media that lauded the diversity and depth of Seeger’s cultural contributions. A few of the tributes also acknowledged the considerable degree to which Seeger’s face had grown to bear the same sort of wizened-yet-wise visage as had been associated with his mentors, the gone-but-not-forgotten elders of old-time music.