Look what was in the afternoon mail! It’s John McCutcheon’s latest album and a t-shirt. John and I are about the same age and each of us, in our teens, discovered a wonderful, kind, talented, controversial, sometimes wildly mistaken but always honest, American patriot and national treasure — Pete Seeger. The album is chocked full of John’s interpretation of some of the soundtrack of my youth. The t-shirt shows the skin of Pete’s banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”
As a high-schooler I became a card-carrying member of the Columbia Record Club. As such I was able to order, for one cent as I recall, twelve LPs. Of course I was then committed to paying bout six dollars a month for the rest of the century or so. How I loved those albums… the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter Paul & Mary, the Limeliters, and more. Pete Seeger’s We Shall Overcome album was one of them. The title song, and "Guantanamera" (Oh! I have loved that song for more than fifty years.) "Little Boxes", "Oh, Freedom", ...
I sit in my easy chair, tapping at this keyboard, eyes blurred by moisture as “Sailing Down My Golden River” fills the room.
If you ever get a chance to hear John in concert, don’t miss it. In less than a month now Sheila and I will hear some of these songs again. John will be one of the featured storytellers at the National Storytelling Festival the first weekend in October. Wouldn’t miss it.
I had forgotten Sheila had bought this for me as a birthday present (in March!) before its release. It has finally been released!
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