Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – April 30, 2024: Remembering Pete Seeger

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/64978.html

Theme: Remembering Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

Pete Seeger – who died in 2014 at age 94 – was a folksinger, musician, songwriter, author and activist at the vanguard of the folk revival from the 1940s until his death. Virtually all of us who came into the folk scene over the past seven decades or more, stand on Pete’s shoulders.

Pete Seeger- Tomorrow is a Highway

If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle (Smithsonian Folkways)

The Weavers- Kisses Sweeter Than Wine

The Weavers at Carnegie Hall (Vanguard)

Nanci Griffith with Odetta, The Indigo Girls, Kennedy Rose, John Prine, James Hooker, Barry & Holly Tashian, John Gorka, David Mallett, Marlin Griffith & Jim Rooney- Wimoweh (Mbube)

Other Voices/Other Rooms (Elektra)

Perla Batalla- Guantanamera

Discoteca Batalla (Mechuda Music)

Peter Paul & Mary- If I Had a Hammer

Peter Paul and Mary (Warner Bros.)

Noel Paul Stookey- Not That Kind of Music

At Home: The Maine Tour (Neworld)

Pete Seeger with Arlo Guthrie & Shenendoah- Precious Friend You Will Be There

Precious Friend (Warner Bros.)

Bruce Cockburn- Turn, Turn, Turn

Rarities (True North)

Kronos Quartet with Sam Amidon, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight & Aoife O'Donovan- Where Have All the Flowers Gone

Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger (Smithsonian Folkways)

Magpie- Last Train to Nuremburg

Endless River (Long Tail)

Ken Whiteley- Quite Early Morning

Ken Whiteley and the Beulah Band (Borealis)

Pete Seeger- One Grain of Sand

Dangerous Songs!? (Columbia/Legacy)

Tom Paxton, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer (The Power of Song)

All New (Community Music)

Annie Patterson- Pastures of Plenty

Meet Me By the Moonlight (Annie Patterson)

Arlo Guthrie with Shenendoah- Sailing Down This Golden River

Outlasting the Blues (Rising Son)

Pete Seeger- Of Time and Rivers Flowing

Pete (Living Music)

Reggie Harris- High Over the Hudson

On Solid Ground (Reggie Harris Music)

Happy Traum- Empty Pocket Blues

I Walk the Road Again (Roaring Stream)

Rosalie Sorrels- Old Devil Time

Report from Grimes Creek (Green Linnet)

Penny Lang- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread

Carry On Children (She-Wolf)

Pete Seeger- Both Sides Now

Young vs. Old (Columbia)

John McCutcheon with Hot Rize- Well May the World Go

To Everyone in All the World: A Celebration of Pete Seeger (Appalsongs)

Next week: Songs for Mothers.

--Mike Regenstreif

Bob Dylan at 80

Photo: John Shearer (for Columbia Records)

Note: This is an updated version of my essay, Bob Dylan at 75, which was an updated version of my essay, Bob Dylan at 70.

Bob Dylan turns 80 on May 24 – 60 years and a few months after he first arrived in New York City with a repertoire of folksongs learned from Odetta and Woody Guthrie records.

Within a relatively short time, Dylan was one of the premier folk artists in Greenwich Village and was well on his way to becoming, arguably, but certainly in my opinion, the most important and influential songwriter ever.

I’m reminded now of something the young Dylan said.

In 1963, talking to Nat Hentoff for the liner notes to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan about his ability to pull off a song as difficult as “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Dylan said, “It’s a hard song to sing. I can sing it sometimes, but I ain’t that good yet. I don’t carry myself yet the way that Big Joe Williams, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Lightnin’ Hopkins have carried themselves. I hope to be able to someday, but they’re older people.”

Dylan was all of 21 years old when he made that statement. Woody Guthrie – hospitalized with the Huntington’s disease that would kill him in 1967 – and Lightnin’ Hopkins were both then around 50. Big Joe Williams was about 60 and Lead Belly had died in 1949 at 61.

Dylan now is significantly older than Williams, Guthrie and Hopkins were then – and older than Lead Belly was when he died (as am I, for that matter). The young Dylan was highly influenced by those legendary artists who had come along decades earlier – his own influence would soon surpass all others. He changed what was possible to do in the context of a song.

And, yes, he does carry himself with all of the musical gravitas that Williams, Guthrie, Lead Belly and Hopkins had then.

Dylan’s music has been part of my life for most of my life. I bought Dylan’s first few LPs in 1967 when I was 13 and have listened intently to everything that he’s released over the past 60 years (and a fair bit of what’s never been released). I’ve seen him in concert many times and I’ve read most of the good books (including his own Chronicles Volume One), and maybe a few too many of the bad books, that have been written about Dylan over the years.

I was even introduced to him once – in 1975 – for about half a second. “Pleased to meet ya,” he said. I was 21, he was 34, ages that now seem so young.

I’ve written about a bunch of Dylan albums and books over the years in newspapers and magazines (and here on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches blog), I’ve produced and hosted a bunch of radio specials on him and his songs, but I don’t know Dylan. He is easily the most enigmatic, the most unknowable, person I’ve ever encountered.

As I noted in my book review of Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz in a 2011 issue of Sing Out! magazine, I’ve long thought that one of the reasons I so appreciate so much of Bob Dylan’s oeuvre is that (I think) we’ve listened to so much of the same music. To the traditional folk and blues songs, and to so many of the musicians who played them. When Dylan sang, “no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell,” I knew what he was talking about because I’ve listened to all those old Blind Willie McTell records. When he borrows lines or settings from Woody Guthrie or Lead Belly or others, I know where they come from. Dylan’s music is rooted ever so strongly in what Greil Marcus termed the “old weird America,” the folk music and the folk-rooted blues and country music that developed in particular regional locations and began to spread everywhere in the first half of the 20th century.

This leads me to the point I wanted to make when I started writing this little essay. Even before Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, there have been commentators who’ve said that Dylan left folk music behind. I don’t think that’s at all true. To this day, Dylan’s songwriting continues to be rooted in the “old weird America.” Dylan didn’t leave folk music behind when he embraced rock ‘n’ roll, he changed what was possible in a folk music context; both in how it’s played and how it’s expressed. I hear folk music at the heart of so much of Dylan’s songwriting – from his earliest work to his most recent.

As I noted last year when Dylan released Rough and Rowdy Ways, “On his first album of new songs in eight years, Bob Dylan, at 79, has given us his some of his most fascinating songs in decades. From the opening song, “I Contain Multitudes,” an exploration of complicated identity, to the final, epic song, “Murder Most Foul,” ostensibly about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but also much about iconic music, cinema and literature, Dylan continues to use a musical foundation drawing on folk music, blues and the Great American Songbook composers to complement his often-spellbinding lyrics.

And anyone who thinks that folk music is necessarily defined by acoustic guitars does not understand folk music.

Even the three albums celebrating the Great American Songbook that Dylan released between 2015 and 2017, in my opinion, are less a homage to Frank Sinatra, than they are a recognition that those classic songs somehow form part of that “old weird America.” It’s not so much the circumstances of how and when they were written as the context in which they are interpreted.

When jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie developed bebop, they weren’t leaving jazz behind, they were changing it; even though some of the traditional jazz greats like Louis Armstrong were slow to accept or understand what Parker and Gillespie were doing. Just like some in the folk establishment of 1965 were slow to accept and understand what Dylan was doing. Bob Dylan changed folk music in much the same way Charlie Parker changed jazz.

As far as I’m concerned, Dylan playing his folk-rooted songs with rock musicians in his time is not very different from the Weavers playing folksongs with the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra in theirs.

Anyway, real rock ‘n’ roll, is a folk-rooted form. Just listen to the Sun-era recordings of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash or Jerry Lee Lewis. Listen to Wanda Jackson’s 1950s records, listen to Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley or Little Richard. The folk and blues roots are there in that music.

By the way, Louis Armstrong was a folksinger, too.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

I will be hosting a series of three radio specials “The Times They Are A-Changin’: A Nod to Bob Dylan at 80,” on CKCU during the week surrounding Dylan’s birthday.

            Part 1 will be on Stranger Songs on Tuesday May 18, 3:30-5 pm (EDT). Click on "LISTEN NOW" at this link to hear the show.

            Part 2 will be on the Saturday Morning show on Saturday May 22, 7-10 am (EDT). Click on "LISTEN NOW" at this link to hear the show.

            Part 3 will be on Stranger Songs on Tuesday May 25, 3:30-5 pm (EDT). Click on "Listen Now" at this link to hear the show.

All of those shows can be heard at 93.1 FM in the Ottawa area or online at ckcufm.com at the time of the broadcast. They will also be available 24/7 for on-demand streaming. I will update this post with links for each show’s stream here as soon as they are available (a few days before each broadcast).

Find me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

–Mike Regenstreif

Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday April 27, 2019

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU in Ottawa heard live on Saturday mornings from 7 until 10 am (Eastern time) and then available for on-demand streaming. I am one of the four rotating hosts of Saturday Morning and base my programming on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT in Montreal.

CKCU can be heard at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and http://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Saturday Morning can be streamed on-demand at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/42656.html

“We are traveling in the footsteps of those who’ve come before,” this program celebrates the enduring legacy of Pete Seeger (1919-2014). Some of the songs on the show were written or co-written by Pete, others are traditional or contemporary songs from his repertoire, and some were inspired by him. Friday, May 3, will be the centennial of Pete’s birth.

The Weavers- When the Saints Go Marching In

Best of the Vanguard Years (Vanguard)

John McCutcheon- To Everyone in All the World

To Everyone in All the World: A Celebration of Pete Seeger (Appalsongs)

Peter, Paul & Mary- If I Had a Hammer

Peter, Paul and Mary (Warner Bros.)

SONiA disappear fear & Gitte Diatsschuk- Where Have All the Flowers Gone

Live at Maximal (Disappear Records)

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer- Well May the World Go/Letter from Pete’s Banjo

Get Up and Do Right (Community Music)

Grit Laskin- The Photographers

Unabashedly Folk: Songs and Tunes 1979-1985 (Borealis)

Rosalie Sorrels- Old Devil Time

Report from Grimes Creek (Green Linnet)

Ken Whiteley- Quite Early Morning

Ken Whiteley and the Beulah Band (Borealis)

Pete Seeger- Both Sides Now

Young vs. Old (Columbia)

Spook Handy- Pete Seeger’s Life

Dedicated to the Proposition: Pete, Woody & Me, Vol. II (Akashic)

David Wiffen- Times are Getting Hard

At the Bunkhouse Coffeehouse, Vancouver BC (Universal International)

Happy Traum- Empty Pocket Blues

I Walk the Road Again (Roaring Stream)

Bonnie Dobson- Dink’s Song

Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew (Hornbeam)

Penny Lang- Oh, Had I a Golden Thread

Carry On Children (She-Wolf)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle- Petites Boîtes (Little Boxes)

La vache qui pleure (Tribu)

Pete Seeger- My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)

The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (Smithsonian Folkways)

Richie Havens- Of Time and Rivers Flowing

Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger (Appleseed)

Arlo Guthrie- Sailing Down This Golden River

Outlasting the Blues (Rising Son)

Kim & Reggie Harris- High Over the Hudson

Unreleased recording used with permission

The Wailin' Jennys- Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie

The Wailin’ Jennys (The Wailin’ Jennys)

Long John Baldry- Rock Island Line

Remembering Leadbelly (Stony Plain)

Odetta- Midnight Special

Lookin’ for a Home: Thanks to Leadbelly (M.C.)

Pete Seeger- Huddie Ledbetter was Helluva Man

Pete (Living Music)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Jerry Jeff Walker- Hard Travelin’

Friends of Mine (HighTone)

Tim O'Brien- Pastures of Plenty

Tim O’Brien Band (Howdy Skies)

Judy Collins- So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh

Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts (Bear Family)

Pete Seeger- This Land is Your Land

The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (Smithsonian Folkways)

Joe Jencks- Let Me Sing You a Song

Poets, Philosophers, Workers & Wanderers (Turtle Bear Music)

Kate Campbell- Passing Through

The K.O.A. Tapes (Vol.1) (Large River Music)

Pete Seeger- L’Internationale

Singalong, Sanders Theatre, 1980 (Smithsonian Folkways)

                  

Bruce Cockburn- Turn, Turn, Turn

Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger (Appleseed)

Perla Batalla- Guantanamera

Discoteca Batalla (Mechuda Music)

Malaika- Malaika

Live (Malaika)

HARP: Holly Near, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger- Wimoweh (Mbube)

A Time to Sing (Appleseed)

Dave Fry- Lessons from Pete

Troubadour (Dave Fry)

Chaim Tannenbaum- Farther Along

Chaim Tannenbaum (StorySound)

The Klezmatics w/Joshua Nelson & Kathryn Farmer- Oh Mary Don’t You Weep

Brother Moses Smote the Water (Piranha)

Manx Marriner Mainline- This Little Light of Mine

Hell Bound for Heaven (Stony Plain)

Bruce Springsteen- Jacob’s Ladder

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia)

Dawn Tyler Watson- Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

En Duo (Justin Time)

Tom Paxton- The Honor of Your Company

Live For the Record (Sugar Hill)

Pete Seeger w/Arlo Guthrie & Shenendoah- Precious Friend You Will Be There

Precious Friend (Warner Bros.) 

Jim Kweskin- Living in the Country

Unjugged (Hornbeam)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on May 25.

Find me on Twitter. @MikeRegenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif