Millard lampell biography of martin luther king

The New Yorker, January 29, 1972 P. 30

Talk story about a reception at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center to celebrate the release of records made from 2 memorial concerts for Woody Guthrie. Woody was the most prolific & influential folk singer of his generation, & when he died, in 1967, after a 15-year battle with Huntington's disease, a group of his relatives & friends organized the 2 concerts-one at Carnegie Hall & the other at the Hollywood Bowl. The concerts were recorded, & the royalties from the records will go to the Committee to the Woody Guthrie Tribute Fund. At the reception there were a few brief speeches & some group singing led by Pete Seeger; 0scar Brand; Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son; Fred Hellerman, one of the original Weavers; & Millard Lampell, a writer, who directed both concerts. Writer talked with Mrs. Guthrie, who mentioned her Committee to Combat Huntington's disease; Moses Asch, the founder of Folkways Records; & Al Brackman, who published almost all of Woody's music His most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", has sold more than 1/2 million copies over the years. Pete Seeger & Millard Lampell reminisced about their first group with Woody, in 1941, which was the first group to sing urban folk songs. The problem is to keep the mass media from turning him into a precious folk hero, Lampell said. Seeger added that he was a man who fought the Establishment every day of his life. Not many people realize when they sing "This Land Is Your Land", that it was written by a man who called himself a Communist & wrote a column for the "Daily Worker".

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Pete Seeger, one of the most influential artists in American history, was born on May 3rd 1919.

Pete provided much of the soundtrack for the political awakening of several generations of activists. The songs he wrote, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and those he has popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom. He introduced Americans to songs from other cultures, like “Wimoweh” (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”) from South Africa, “Tzena, Tzena” from Israel (which reached number two on the pop charts), and “Guantanamera” from Cuba, inspiring what is now called “world music.”

Thanks to Seeger’s influence, protest songs — via folk, rock, blues, and soul genres — became popular and even commercially successful. He recorded over eighty albums — of children’s songs, labour, civil rights, and antiwar songs, traditional American folk songs, international songs, and Christmas songs. Among performers around the globe, Seeger became a symbol of a principled artist deeply engaged in the world.

Yet even during the height of the 1950s and 1960s folk revival and the popularity of protest music, Seeger was blocked from network TV and the media spotlight because of his left-wing politics. Millions sang his songs without knowing his name.

Seeger’s life and legacy offers some clues for working through perennial riddles faced by American socialists and radicals. How to make use of a relatively privileged background to promote social justice — rather than be paralysed by guilt? How to create a popular art that doesn’t succumb to banality, cynicism, or spectacle, but that helps inspire activism?

Seeger came of age during the 1930s, when many artists, playwrights, novelis