Pete Seeger

Grandfather ran a well-off import-export business that stumbled in the 1890s forcing the family to move out of their palatial estate in Staten Island, New York.

Uncle Alan Seeger served in the Foreign Legion during World War I where he died at the Battle of The Somme in 1916. His fellow graduates from Harvard Class of 1910 were T.S. Eliot and Walter Lippmann.

Sixteen-year-old Pete Seeger enrolled at the Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut and then decided to become a hermit. His life since then has been one social cause after another, buoyed by an almost indefatigable career as a self-described "sing-along leader. "During the 1930s he attended Harvard, from which his musicologist father Charles Seeger (a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and a conscientious objector during World War I) had graduated in 1908.

As an alternative to his major, Sociology (which he disliked), he played tenor banjo (failing to make the Harvard Jazz Band) and participated in the pacifist/communist Harvard Student Union so much that he lost his scholarship, leaving Harvard in 1938.

In 1939 actor/folksinger 'Will Geer' organized the "All-American Left-Wing Folk-Song Revival Movement," a benefit concert for migrant workers in California. It was there that Pete met Woody Guthrie and began touring with him.

In 1940 Seeger started the Almanac Singers with Lee Hays, Pete Hawes and Millard Lampell; during his tours with this pro-union, anti-war group the FBI began a file on him. The group broke up at the start of World War II (Seeger enlisted in the army; Guthrie entered the Merchant Marine).

His first child, a son, named Peter Ota Seeger born in 1944, died at six months of age, while Pete was deployed overseas.

After the war he started People's Songs (later Sing Out!), and in 1949 formed a new group, The Weavers, with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert'. For years he had trouble with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and was, effectively, blacklisted.

He recorded dozens of albums (Columbia, Folkways) and wrote thousands of songs, among which are "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "If I Had a Hammer," and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (which in the 1960s became a huge hit for The Byrds).

He helped start the Greenwich Village music magazine Broadside in the 1960s and reorganized the Newport Folk Festival.

He wrote the song "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)", which was recorded by Judy Collins and later became a #1 hit for The Byrds in 1965. The lyrics were adapted from the Old Testament of the Bible; namely from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 1-8.

Made an appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967) but the song he performed, "Waist Deep in The Big Muddy" (an allegory about the then-escalating Vietnam War), was deemed too controversial by the CBS network, and it was censored from the broadcast.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972.

Father of Tinya V.S. Seeger and father-in-law of Shabazz A. Jackson of Beacon, New York; Grandfather of Moraya Seeger Jackson (born in 1988) and grandfather-in-law of Christopher Landis DeGeare of Minnesota.

He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1994 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 (under the category Early Influence).