Pete Seeger's forthcoming "Live in '65" will have a familiar ring to some of Pittsburgh old folkies.
The two-CD, 31-track set -- previously unreleased and sonically updated -- was recorded Feb. 20, 1965 at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland.
Seeger acknowledges his surroundings right away, opening the concert with a song he says "hit the charts" in 1848 -- "Oh, Susanna" by Stephen Foster, on which he accompanies himself on banjo.
He follows that immediately with "He Lies in an American Land," a song about a mill accident written by local steel worker Andrew Kovaly in Slovakian and translated to Seeger by a music superintendent in the Pittsburgh schools. The liner notes indicate that the song served as inspiration for Bruce Springsteen's "American Land," which Springsteen did on "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions."
The live record also features such folk classics as "If I Had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Greensleeves," plus a cover of Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."
It's available on Appleseed Recordings on Nov. 10.
Posted
Oct 21 2009, 02:23 PM
by
Scott Mervis