Once back from England Pete resumed his varied activities, while awaiting the outcome of his appeal. With Pete’s strong support, Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen launched Broadside, subtitled “A Handful of Songs about Our Times” in February 1962. While attracting a large array of new singer-songwriters, including Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs, Broadside would also publish many of Pete’s songs during its long life. The small Los Angeles Broadside, with no connection to Sis and Gordon’s publication, began in 1962, with the second issue featuring Allan Hjerpe’s review of a recent Seeger concert. Hjerpe, active in the vibrant local folk scene, praised Pete’s selections and style, but with some minor carping. On May 18 the Court of appeals overturned Pete’s conviction, as explained in the New York Times the following day: “In reversing the conviction, the court held that the indictment was defective because it failed to define properly the authority of the subcommittee to conduct the hearings.” The opinion was written by Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman, the same judge who had sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair for their alleged atomic espionage.*
There were Blue-Grassers there, & folk music scholars, and wads of people from guitar classes (dragging along reluctant husbands & wives), & enthusiastic Seeger fans, & some who knew nothing of Seeger but wanted to support CORE. There were nearly 2800 people of widely diverse interests at the Pete Seeger Concert in Santa Monica on Friday, Mar. 9, and Seeger captured them completely in one of the most masterful performances I have ever seen on any stage.
His program included a few “old favorites,” some traditional songs (including a lovely version of “Little Birdie”), a fair number of topical songs, & quite a number of miscellaneous bits and pieces (including an English lower-middle-class version of “Lord Randall” with its chorus “Oh, Mother be quick, for I’m going to be sick and gotta lie down”). It was a delightful potpourri of a program, held together only by Seeger’s bridges of conversation, explanation & reminiscences. It was a program which could have been chaos in the hand of anyone of lesser talents.
Many of Seeger’s gifts are not obvious ones. His voice is a pleasant, slightly nasal sort of Home-Made Baritone which never distracts from the melody or words of the song he is singing. His enunciation is clear without being labored. His instrumental work, while more complex than it sounds, is unobtrusive.
But what are those talents which Seeger has in exceptional degree? One is his sense of musicianship. Everything he sings is, somehow, very appropriate, & he covers a wide range of music. (One never feels in a Seeger concert the sense of embarrassed horror felt when Josh White performs an English ballad or when Richard Dyer-Bennet emasculates John Henry.) Furthermore, Seeger has a delightful sense of humor, and an equally delightful sense of wonder. He also has an awesome sense of rhythm, of pace, and “drive.” He has integrity. And, perhaps most important, he has an unmatched ability to communicate his personality, his love for the music he sings (& his connotations with it) to his audience. No other performer in the field can approach his ability to teach a song to an audience. This is basically a function of the degree of attention which the performer can gain from his audience.
SOURCE Broadside (Los Angeles), #2, April 1962, 2.
I suppose it is true that Pete uses some very complex chord-structures which might be considered out of place in folk music. But they did not sound complex, & perhaps the average guitar or banjo player would realize that something other than I, IV, and V chords were involved only when trying some of the effects later at home. And granted, he can’t frail for sour apples. His touch on the banjo is so light that the frails & heavy picking sounded a bit ineffectual—but who cares? The important thing was that here was a performer who delighted & entertained & inspired his audience from the moment he charged onto the stage—shedding his coat, rolling up his sleeves, smiling and talking to himself & ready to go to work—until that moment, two short hours later, when the audience realized that a great performance had come to an end.