Pete Seeger concert flyer, Carnegie Hall, December 27, 1957. Cohen collection.
As Pete struggled to establish his solo career with concerts and albums, his publicity was generally positive, with little concern for his radical politics. In his article in The Parkside Journal, a neighborhood paper in Los Angeles, Monty Muns was taken with the large and enthusiastic crowd at his concert. There is no mention of politics, only of Pete’s “artistic presence … one of the few people who can move an audience to tears or to joy.” Dorsey Callaghan’s review of a concert in Detroit was equally positive, noting that there was “nothing quite to compare with Pete Seeger’s way with an audience.”* In 1955 he was ahead of the curve in promoting folk music, which would soon increase in popularity.
Pete’s records continued with mostly non-political songs, although Folkways reissued the old Almanacs’ Talking Union album with the addition of a new side of Pete accompanied by the Song Swappers. A studio group including the teenage Mary Travers, Erik Darling, who also performed with the Folksay Trio and the Tarriers (and in 1958 would replace Pete in the Weavers), and Tommy Geraci, the Song Swappers joined Pete on the 1955 Folkways releases Bantu Choral Folk Songs, Folk Songs of Four Continents, and Camp Songs. That same year Pete compiled The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide: Vol. 1: An Instruction Record, a fitting companion from Folkways to his banjo instruction album. He also wrote a pamphlet, How To Make a Chalil, about flute construction. While Pete was usually billed as a banjo wiz, he was a skilled 6- and 12-string guitar player, and had mastered a variety of other folk instruments. Pete and Toshi had also become involved in film making, as they described in a letter to the Ethno-Musicology Newsletter in September 1955: “We have embarked upon a study of American folk instrumental techniques using a 16mm sound motion picture camera, and would welcome correspondence from others in the field concerning the form of such films as well a how best to make them generally available.” They had already completed a 30-minute film on playing the banjo.*
While Pete’s popularity appeared to be growing, a congressional investigation yanked him back to reality when it called him to testify about his political affiliations in mid-August 1955. On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had been established as a special investigating committee and became a standing (permanent) committee of the House in 1945. Over the years it was chaired by a Democrat or Republican, depending on which party had a majority, and in 1955 the chair was Francis Walter, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. The committee had gained fame through investigating Alger Hiss, the Hollywood Ten, and other alleged subversives, having been fed secret information from the FBI. It had reached its greatest influence in the late forties and early fifties, but in 1955 it still remained active and dangerous. In mid-decade it set its sights on folk musicians and others in the arts, including Burl Ives, Josh White, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, Irwin Silber, Fred Hellerman, and Seeger. While some cooperated, most took the Fifth Amendment (the right against self-incrimination), but Pete decided to take the First (freedom of speech). Those who refused to cooperate could be charged with contempt of Congress and face a federal prison sentence. Pete dodged the incriminating questions, such as his past political affiliations, infuriating his inquisitors. The committee knew all the answers in advance, having been briefed by the FBI and other right-wing organizations, and only desired to humiliate, intimidate, and force the naming of other alleged communists, but Pete refused to cooperate.†
Soon after his HUAC appearance, Pete, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman reunited as the Weavers and appeared at Carnegie Hall for a Christmas concert, organized by Harold Leventhal. “Although that was the year the House Un-American Activities Committee turned its beady eye in my direction, the overall climate had brightened a little,” he would later write. “This concert was received so well that the Weavers were in business again. With Harold’s cooperation we now made freer choices about where and how we wanted to sing; and audiences responded to the informal give-and-take which we ourselves enjoyed.” Irwin Silber penned a rave review in Sing Out! “It is hardly coincidental that The Weavers chose the close of 1955 for their public reunion,” he optimistically noted. “The recent easing of international tension as a result of the Geneva Conference, together with the repudiation of McCarthyism by the American people, has created a new and favorable atmosphere for groups like The Weavers.” In the same issue of Sing Out! Pete expressed his own confident, but guarded, view: “Here’s a peculiar situation: with the American folksong revival on in full force, with 500,000 guitars sold last year, and millions more having fun singing folk songs together, why is it there are comparatively few choruses in the country, and such as there are find themselves hard pressed to keep up their membership?” New professional groups were forming, including the Gateway Singers in San Francisco, the Tarriers in New York, and the Easy Riders in Los Angeles, all influenced by the Weavers and serving as a prelude for the spectacular rise of the Kingston Trio in 1958. But Pete would always prefer grassroots participation over commercial success.*
In 1957 a federal grand jury indicted Pete for contempt of Congress, demonstrating that, despite the apparent thawing of the Cold War, the long arm of the government was not through with him. Pete quickly wrote a summary of his current legal tangle to clarify the situation.†