Society
for American Music
2003 Honorary Member
Mike
Seeger
View the citation
read at the annual meeting
As
a tireless proponent and a brilliant performer of traditional American music,
Mike Seeger has been an important force in our cultural lives for more than
three decades.It is no wonder that Mike Seeger has maintained a lifelong fascination
with the roots of American music: indeed, it has been in his blood from the
day he was born. His father was the pioneering musicologist Charles Seeger;
his mother, Ruth Crawford, was a respected composer and author of American
Folk Songs for Children, long considered the definitive work in its field;
his half-brother Pete, is, of course, one of the world's most beloved folksingers/songwriters;
and sister Peggy has become widely known as an important figure in the renaissance
of Anglo-American folk music. At a very early age, Mike began to absorb an
extraordinary range of songs and styles. As Seeger himself recalled it, "I
was raised on field recordings of Southern rural music and my parents' singing
of these songs to me and their friends. We always sang around the house."
By his late teens, he had developed a remarkable degree of virtuosity on a
wide variety of instruments, including guitar, fiddle, autoharp, banjo, mandolin,
dulcimer, mouth harp and dobro, and began a performing career with his sister
Peggy. In the mid-fifties his interest began to shift from the prevalent urban
folk music of the day to the country and bluegrass styles of the rural South.
In 1958 he formed, with John Cohen and Tom Paley (replaced in 1963 by Tracy
Schwartz), The New Lost City Ramblers, destined to become one of the most
important and influential groups in the revival of American traditional music.
During a remarkably prolific period in the 50s and 60s, the Ramblers produced
a series of recordings that provided the source material for many a budding
folkie's repertoire; a veritable encyclopedia of blues, ballads, and bluegrass
breakdowns, songs of love and of labor.
As his own reputation as a performer began to grow, Mike also became a vital
force in making available to a wider audience the work of many of the artists
who first created the music he loved. At the behest of Folkways Records founder
Moe Asch, he became a leading producer of field recordings. The first of these,
Negro Folk Songs and Tunes, contained the first recorded work of the
great songwriter/guitarist/singer Elizabeth Cotton. Subsequent Folkways recordings
gathered by Seeger included work by the Stoneman Family, Dock Boggs, Don Stover,
the Lilly Brothers and dozens of other American musical pioneers.
Over the decades, Mike Seeger has skillfully juggled multiple careers: he
has gained universal renown and respect as a teacher and advocate of our most
precious cultural treasures; and he has traveled the world, performing as
an acclaimed solo artist, as a member of the New Lost City Ramblers, and in
collaboration with his sister Peggy and other members of his illustrious family.
His latest recording on the Rounder label, the Grammy-nominated Third Annual
Farewell Reunion, (featuring a stellar line-up of folk, country, and bluegrass
greats, including Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, David Grisman, Ralph Stanley,
Pete and Peggy Seeger and many others), shows that Mike Seeger's passion for
American roots music and his brilliance as a performer are undiminished. He
remains one of our greatest musical and cultural resources.
(quoted from http://grateful.dead.net/almanac/vol2_2/Seegerp2.html)