We Shall Overcome: Complete Carnegie Hall Concert [Live]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Pete Seeger, who began recording in the early 1940s, is perhaps the most influential figure in the American folk revival, a walking repository of song who's had an immense influence in popularizing folk music with mainstream audiences. The 2 CD We Shall Overcome is an expanded version of a classic 1963 live album that offers an excellent example of Seeger's activist passion and good-humored humanity. This expanded edition contains the entire 40-song concert, making it almost three times longer than the original vinyl incarnation. The typically eclectic and heartfelt program, encompassing civil-rights anthems and anti-war pleas, along with tunes from England, Russia, Brazil, and the Caribbean, provides an excellent introduction to the artist. --Scott Schinder

Tracks:

Audience
Banjo Medley: Cripple Creek/Old Joe Clark/Leather Britches
Lady Margret
Mrs. McGrath
Mail Myself to You
My Rambling Boy
A Little Brand New Baby
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Little Boxes
Mrs. Clara Sullivan's Letter
Who Killed Norma Jean?
Who Killed Davey Moore?
Farewell
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Didn't He Ramble (Fragment)
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
If You Miss Me At The Back Of The Bus
I Ain't Scared Of Your Jail
Oh Freedom

Tracks:

Audience
Skip To My Lou
Sweet Potatoes
Deep Blue Sea
Sea Of Mercy (Fragment)
Oh Louisiana
(The Ring on My Finger Is) Johnny Give Me
Oh What A Beautiful City
Lua Do Sertao (Moon Of The Backland)
The Miserlou
Polyushke Polye (Meadowlands)
Genbaku O Yurusumagi (Never Again The A-Bomb)
Schtille Di Nacht (Quiet Is The Night)
Viva La Quince Brigada (Long Live The Fifteenth Brigade)
Tshotsholosa (Road Song)
This Land Is Your Land
From Way Up Here
We Shall Overcome
Mister Tom Hughes's Town
Bring Me Li'l' Water Silvy
Guantanamera

Amazon.com essential recording

Pete Seeger, who began recording in the early 1940s, is perhaps the most influential figure in the American folk revival, a walking repository of song who's had an immense influence in popularizing folk music with mainstream audiences. The 2 CD We Shall Overcome is an expanded version of a classic 1963 live album that offers an excellent example of Seeger's activist passion and good-humored humanity. This expanded edition contains the entire 40-song concert, making it almost three times longer than the original vinyl incarnation. The typically eclectic and heartfelt program, encompassing civil-rights anthems and anti-war pleas, along with tunes from England, Russia, Brazil, and the Caribbean, provides an excellent introduction to the artist. --Scott Schinder

Customer Reviews:

Not _Quite_ Uncut.......2007-05-22

This is a great recording, but it should be noted that "Wimoweh", which is on the original Columbia Records LP, is not present here, presumably because of the immensely complicated issues surrounding the copyright of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". This is a mild disappointment, since it would have been nice to hear Pete teaching the song to the audience, something rarely heard in recordings.

Superb, a songwriter / singer for his time, and for today also.......2007-01-18

Pete Seeger, is a "one-off". An exceptional talent and a great human being. We need to be listening to his music today. It is still as important and relevant as when he was touring America and giving concerts like this one.
I first heard and fell in love with his style and message in the mid 1960s, on vinyl LPs. I loved his music and his message. So did Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many others. Pete, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, The Weavers were important influences on Dylan and Baez, and many others. Their messages and active involvement in important social and political issues of their day had a great influence. Unfortunately it is still relevant today.
Please keep this wonderful music available to today's generation and future ones too. Eventually humankind 'might' get the message. I hope so.

Humanity's songster.......2007-01-09

Back in the mid-1950's I attended a summer camp in New Hampshire for 5 years. For most of those years, sometime in the middle of the summer a tall, lanky redhead came striding up the camp's dirt road with two instrument cases slung across his back. He'd stay with us for 10 days or so, and every night we'd meet in the rec hall or by the lake and he'd teach us songs and sing with us. There was a small group of us who played instruments like guitar or (in my case, at that point) mandolin, and he'd meet with us and teach us. All I knew about him was that his name was Pete, that he had an amazing and inspiring, trumpet-like voice, infectious optimism and charisma, and that we all sang alot better when we was there than when he wasn't.

I had no idea who Pete was, what his last name was, or anything more about him until my 4th year at camp, when my counselor, who was a banjo player, filled me in (and refused to play in front of Pete because he was embarrassed). "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall" had just come out, and I got that album and lo and behold, most of those songs were ones we'd learned from Pete and there was that amazing voice, that banjo, the driving rhythms, and the charismatic presence bringing people together to sing better than they ever knew they could. Pete was blacklisted then, and made his living going from schools to colleges to summer camps; there were many kids like me who grew up with Pete's warm and human influence.

Any recording of a Pete Seeger concert will give you an inkling of what it was like to be with him, but this one is special -- it's complete, it's long, it's very human, and it catches Pete at the height of the folk music revival and before the crucible of the late-1960's. It's all here. I suspect you'll find yourself singing along, stamping your feet, and at the end feeling a lot better about yourself, more committed to making life better for yourself and others, and more optimistic about this world. That's the hallmark of Pete's humanity. He wanted people to be involved, he disliked passive media like TV and recordings, and he played and inspired his audiences like an extension of his beloved banjo and guitar.

Yes, Pete was a member of the Communist Party from 1941 to 1949, but whether his songs after 1949 reflect, or were driven by, his affiliation (as another reviewer suggests) is, I believe, incorrect. Pete's songs were always guided much more by his native optimism, his love of people and the planet, his belief that songs and singing can somehow make a difference, his curiosity and openness, his response to the events around him (which actually made him more radical as he (and we) progressed through the 60's and 70's) and, yes, his open-hearted humanity.

No matter what your affiliation, and even if you've never heard a folk-song record in your life, you deserve to hear this one and let your spirit soar.

Still Singing.......2006-11-11

I've attended Pete's concerts for over 50 years. When you see him you sing. When you hear him you sing along, not necessarily well, but with fervor. This has always been a part of his concerts and this one is no different. What a joy to listen and sing. It is a timeless thrill and experience.

WHEN PETE WAS " KING".......2006-04-03

This review is being used to describe several of Pete Seeger's recordings. Although I have listened to most of his songs and recordings the ones selected here represent those that best represent his life's political and musical work.

My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by `Rock and Roll' music exemplified by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us., and we took that at face value. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music and those musicians need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.

That said, in the early 1960's there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960's cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded to it as such. That these musicians' respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.

As I have noted in my review of Dave Van Ronk's work when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about the Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artist such as Howling Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing `Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies' and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message, including obviously Pete Seeger.

Although I had probably heard Seeger's `Had I a Golden Thread' at some earlier point I actually learned about his music secondhand from a recording of Songs of the Spanish Civil War which included `Viva la Quince Brigada' a tribute to the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades. Since I was intensely interested in that fight in Spain and in that "premature anti-fascist" organization I was hooked. While like Woody Guthrie Seeger's influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the previous political struggles and the ordinary people who made this country, for good or evil what it is today.

Pete's relationship with the American Communist Party while no secret is not widely known. As with Woody what is interesting is that the subjects of his songs fairly closely reflect the party line as it changed to reflect the winds blowing from Moscow. Pete's best work, like Woody's is reflected in the People's Front style of ` Where Have All The Flowers Gone' and the above-mentioned "Golden Thread" reflecting that party's further development of its class collaborationist policy with the Democratic Party. That is, giving up the fight for an independent working class party based on its won program. Politcal differences between us aside, listen to Seeger's recordings and learn about hard times and struggle from earlier times. You deserve to treat yourself to that voice, instrument and message.

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