Bruce Springsteen Forum

Seeger Honored by Springsteen's Tribute



Pete Seeger has never been one to spend much time listening to records, explaining, "I'd rather go hiking in the woods or sailing down the river."

But the dean of American folk music says he'll spin Bruce Springsteen's new cover album, "We Shall Overcome/The Seeger Sessions," as soon as he gets a copy. The collection of songs popularized by Seeger is scheduled for release April 25, a week before his 87th birthday.

"Bruce called me last week and told me it's coming out," the genial master of the five-string banjo said Friday from his home in upstate New York. "Bruce is a great guy and it's a great honor for him to have recorded some songs that he learned from me.

"I get more credit for many of these songs than I should. All I did was be one of the first people to record them," Seeger said of tunes like "Erie Canal," "John Henry" and others that describe the lives of the hard working and oppressed.

The civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" took off after Seeger sang it with others at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, N.C., in 1960. But he noted that various versions of it can be traced to integrated meetings of black and white coal miners in the early 1900s and to black churches in the 1800s.

"The song is famous around the world now," he said.

So is Seeger, who is also enjoying a bit of a renaissance these days. The Weavers, the seminal folk group he co-founded in the 1940s, recently received a Grammy lifetime achievement award.

"I've gotten too much publicity lately and it's very hard to live with it," he joked. "The phone rings too much and I get more mail than I can answer."