For the Love of Pete

 

When Pete Seeger performed at Jazz Fest, much of the pre and post-appearance ink had to do with Seeger the live performer and Seeger the activist; little of it was about Seeger the song stylist. The release of the five-disc American Favorite Ballads (Smithsonian Folkways) – a collection of albums he recorded between 1957 and 1962 for Folkways that presented the great American folk songs – raises this issue. It was originally marketed to libraries, and that is spot-on. The new release is a beautiful package with lengthy notes on the histories of the songs, but I’m keeping it as a reference CD because Seeger presents the songs as the curator in a museum, exceedingly careful with the songs because he’s in the business of preserving them, not bringing them to life. That was the initial intent, but time hasn’t made the recordings more poignant or affecting. His earnest, carefully enunciated singing presents the songs as crisply as possible, but the emotional weight of the songs is generally absent (then again, it’s sometimes missing from the songs themselves).

It’s the counterpoint to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, the first two-set of which was released by Folkways in 1952. After Smith compiled six discs of the odd, personal and idiosyncratic in American music, Seeger and Folkways’ owner Moses Asch decided to assemble the commonplaces and familiar. That doesn’t mean it’s bad; I’m glad I’ve got it, but between the two collections, I know which one I’ll listen to more.