Pete Seeger
Album: Pete Remembers Woody
Label: Appleseed
Tracks: 48
Website: http://www.appleseedmusic.com

The quintessential American folksinger was 21 years old when he first met the legendary Woody Guthrie, just seven years his senior, backstage at a benefit concert in 1940. The two men quickly discovered a rapport, and they began travelling and performing together, providing Pete with what Pete himself aptly termed his own "big, big education in learning about America".

This latest Pete Seeger release gives us, over two discs, Pete's first-hand (spoken-word) reminiscences of Woody's life and lively accounts of his various encounters with Woody. As well as being intrinsically fascinating in their own right, and sometimes distinctly picaresque too, these yield insights into how Woody's life-experiences and reading had gotten transmuted into popular - though often also controversial - songs, and how the man's philosophy and practice has furnished a seminal influence on Pete's own performances to this day.

Pete punctuates these reminiscences (some of which have an occasional modicum of illustrative musical accompaniment) with versions of several of the songs mentioned therein (although it was originally intended that the project would present things the other way round - the music punctuated by the occasional song intro!). The recordings themselves are very relaxed, and recorded casually either in Pete's own living-room or producer David Bernz's den studio, with Pete sharing his tales with us intimately and companionably. Fittingly, for some of the songs Pete is joined by various musicians or singers who are known for their support of Woody's music over the years. For instance, Woody's son Arlo duets with Pete on 66 Highway Blues (one of the few Woody-Pete co-writes), the Work O' The Weavers group joins Pete for a number of items including If I Had A Hammer, the "Arlo-Woody co-write" My Peace and Florence Rees' Which Side Are You On?, and The Vanaver Caravan add their lusty presence to Union Maid (clearly a key inspiration for Dave Cousins' hit!) and Pastures Of Plenty, with Amy Fradon adding her voice to theirs on Peace Pin Boogie. Other participants and collaborators on this venture include Hope Machine's Steve Kirkman (I've Got To Know), Fred Gillen, Jr. (I Ain't Got No Home) and Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer (Howdy Little Newlycome). There's also a couple of archive recordings: the first featuring The Almanac Singers and the second Cisco Houston (this being a duet with Woody himself, recorded in the 1940s); and the whole project is bookended with David Bernz's three-part tribute Woody's Ghost.

This is surely a valuable set, but the inevitable caveat for some will be that, while undoubtedly interesting and illuminating as a reference work, this will by its very nature not be a release that's destined not to be taken down from the shelves all that often, since its purely musical content is just about in the minority here (and that's not criticism but fact).

David Kidman