HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETE SEEGER ninety years old today.
This gent seems to have been around all my life, though it turns out I can't have heard his music before 1950 when, with the Weavers, he first made his mark on popular music, with "On Top of Old Smokey". From then on I was hearing his stuff without knowing his name; "Tzena, Tzena", "Goodnight Irene", "Wimoweh", and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine". Was that last one of Irish origin? The Irish loved it.
Then in the sixties, with the folk revival, Pete came into his own, the Doyen of the genre. Over here we had Ewen McColl, an affine of Pete's, though I'm not sure how the relationship would be described - half-brother-in-law? Comrade McColl was a lot less fun than Comrade Seeger, whose music continued to bother the charts. The songs, not usually his own but refashioned in his style, were taken up by popsters and became Known to a mass audience beyond the folksong community; "Wimoweh", "Guantanamera", "Sloop John B", others I can't think of at the moment. The bloke has been a massive influence on the popular music scene, with his own interpretations and those of his disciples and borrowers. I don't know how many modern artists would cite Comrade Pete as an influence, apart from Springsteen. It should be a multitude.
And to top it all he outlived that creep McCarthy, and all those other witch-hunters and red-baiters; Nixon, Bobby Kennedy, Reagan, et al.
And he hasn't finished yet.

"I'd rather be called red by a rat than rat by a red." (Michael Quill)