Pete spent much of his time working with the Almanac Singers, but he also was involved with other activities. He appeared regularly on Alan Lomax’s two CBS radio programs, American School of the Air and Wellsprings of Music, as well as Henrietta Yurchenco’s folk program on WNYC. As she would later recall about their first meeting: “The engineer set up the microphone in the studio; Pete tuned his banjo and began to sing, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Within minutes we were all attention. The engineer reached for his telephone to alert the entire station, the control room filled with announcers, the program director, and our publicity writers. We knew we had a star in our midst. ‘Pete,’ I said, ‘you’re wonderful. Please, come here whenever you like.’ And we’ve remained friends since then.* Despite his radical politics, Pete was invited to perform at the Music Educators National Conference in Milwaukee on March 29, 1941. Pete would long cherish his role as an educator, introducing children and adults to the fascinating world of folk music.
The Almanacs kept busy into 1942, giving various concerts and holding rent parties, now termed hootenannies. While on a recording trip to Coahoma County, Mississippi, in August and September 1941, Alan Lomax ran across Eddie “Son” House (1902-1988), a stellar blues performer. House had made a few commercial recordings in 1930 for Paramount Records, but was quite unknown when Lomax recorded him in Robinsonville, Mississippi, for the Library of Congress. In December 1941 Lomax invited House to move to New York and join the Almanacs, “who are friends of mine and very nice people.” A month later he repeated his request: “They need somebody who can make his own songs and play a good guitar, and who is experienced in Negro music …. They have a good chance now for radio singing and for recording also, and unless you have some strong reason against it, I would suggest that you consider the matter seriously.” House did respond positively to Lomax, which led to the letter from the Almanacs, surely written by Pete, encouraging him to make the move, although describing some of their hardships. The Almanacs had worked with Josh White but apparently desired a more regular interracial group. House declined the offer but did move to Rochester, New York, in 1943 to work for the railroad. In 1964 a group of blues students discovered him in Rochester, which launched his revived career.*
During late 1941 and into 1942 the Almanacs had become very pro-war, composing such songs as “The Sinking of the Reuben James,” “Dear Mr. President,” and, particularly, “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave.” These and three others made up their next album, Dear Mr. President, for Keynote in early 1942. On February 14 they performed “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave” for thirty-million listeners on Norman Corwin’s This Is War radio program aired on all of the networks. Being in the national spotlight encouraged conservative journalists to dig into their pro-Soviet past, despite that the Soviet Union was now the country’s military ally. For example, Robert Stephens’ February 1942 article in the New York Post, “‘Peace’ Choir Changes Tune,” stressed their political affiliations: “In addition [to their earlier antiwar songs], the singers are favorites of The New Masses, Communist weekly.” In his scathing review of Dear Mr. President in Billboard, Eugene Burr did not rake up their political background but did feel that their “propaganda seems almost too primitive to appeal even to primitives; some of it is so casually savage that it defeats its own ends.”† The war quickly splintered the Almanacs, with Bess Lomax and Butch Hawes moving to Detroit, soon followed by Sis Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen. Pete was drafted into the army, and Woody joined the Merchant Marine. The Daily Worker kept its readers informed in a short piece in early 1943, while still referring to Pete Bowers.