Citatation for Mike Seeger
Honorary Member
Society for American Music
Just as the musical traditions of rural southerners
are rich, deep, and varied, so too have been the life, career,
and contributions of our foremost champion of southern folk music--Mike
Seeger. And, just as southern rural music has had an impact on
the larger musical world in ways untold, Mike Seeger's influence
has been broad and pervasive in more ways and on more levels than
probably even he realizes.
One is hard-pressed to single out any one of Mike's activities
as being more important than the others. As a performer, he has
toured the world for over four decades. Through these performances
he has not only entertained audiences with his singing and his
playing, but he has also inspired countless others to try their
own hand at picking up a guitar, or fiddle, or banjo…or any
other of the seemingly endless number of instruments that he plays.
Mike's playing appears on nearly forty albums, either as a solo
artist, with other members of his family, with various collaborators,
or as a member of the seminal modern string band, the New Lost
City Ramblers. Five of these albums have been nominated for Grammy
awards.
Mike also has been one of the leading recorders and collectors
of southern folk music. His field recording activities have led
to the production of more than thirty commercially released albums.
These albums have brought the music of such master traditional
musicians as Elizabeth Cotten, Dock Boggs, Sam & Kirk McGee,
Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Eck Robertson, Kilby Snow, Lesley Riddle,
the Lilly Brothers, Roscoe Holcomb, Wade Ward, and countless others
to public attention, often for the first time.
Although I suspect that Mike might shy away from the label of
"scholar," he certainly has contributed enormously to
our knowledge and understanding of southern rural music. In the
1950s Mike was one of the first people from outside the south
to emerge as an advocate for bluegrass music. Mike's 1957 production,
American Banjo Scruggs Style, an anthology of the playing of fifteen
different banjo players, is recognized as the first long-playing
album devoted to bluegrass. The chapter on Scruggs-style picking
that Mike contributed to his brother Pete's influential banjo
instruction book gave many aspiring players their first tools
for unlocking the mysteries and complexities of the bluegrass
banjo style.
As bluegrass became more widely known and appreciated, Mike turned
much of his time and attention to earlier forms of music. In 1958,
Mike, John Cohen, and Tom Paley founded the New Lost City Ramblers,
a band devoted to recreating the sounds of the classic southern
string bands. The Ramblers gave many people their first exposure
to old-time music, and sparked an interest in old-time music that
continues to this day. Again, once the string band revival was
safely in high gear, Mike delved ever deeper into the older layers
of southern folk music, beginning to play gourd banjo and quills,
and continuing his field work with older traditional musicians,
both black and white.
Mike has been equally tireless as an educator, working with students
from elementary school through college and graduate school. At
present he is in the middle of a semester-long residency at the
College of William & Mary that is, by all accounts, an enormous
success.
Much more could be said of Mike Seeger and his work, but the point
should now be clear. Performer, collector, scholar, educator,
producer, promoter, and advocate. Fiddler, banjo player, guitarist,
mandolinist, singer, player of quills, dulcimer, autoharp, mouth
harp, and jaw harp. Mike is all of these. But perhaps what he
really is at bottom is a farmer, of sorts. He has sown seeds that
have taken root and borne fruit in myriad ways over half a century.
Mike often refers to the sounds and styles that have been at the
center of his life's work as "music from true vine."
Mike's own music has long been one of the strongest branches on
this vine, and has produced such a wealth of offshoots that we
can all be sure the vine will grow and prosper for generations
to come.
Paul F. Wells, President
Society for American Music
