G. Frederick Starner

Posted: Saturday, October 31, 2009 12:15 am

LOS ANGELES – Former economics professor, banjo player and folk singer Fred Starner died Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009, in Los Angeles. He was 72.

Fred grew up in Toledo, Ohio. He graduated with honors from Oberlin College with a degree in economics and received a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

He went on to teach economics at Drew University in Madison, N.J., then came to the University Wisconsin-La Crosse in 1974.

During his time in New Jersey, he became an ardent environmentalist. He worked with Pete Seeger on the Hudson River “Clearwater” restoration from 1968-1974. He raised money and sang many concerts to bring the public along the Hudson to realize that the river was so polluted that no fish could live in it.

The idea to build a replica of an old Hudson River sloop, which had sailed up and down the Hudson River in the 1800s, came from Pete. He thought if he could get people to come to see this beautiful sloop that he could call attention to the plight of the Hudson. Fred volunteered to raise money and to do concerts to help bring attention to the job of building the sloop. Fred then sailed the first crew of the Clearwater from Maine to New York and then up and down the Hudson, working as a singing member of the crew. Later in the ’70s, he served on the board of the Clearwater restoration for three years.

In 1972, he hosted a 10-part PBS series for New Jersey Public Television called “The Oleanna Trail,” which featured many folk singers whom Fred had met while living on the East Coast.

After moving to La Crosse, where he continued to teach at the university, he was a founder of the Great River Traditional Music and Crafts Festival, which was hosted on the grounds of UW-L. A weekend festival, it featured concerts and workshops led by singers from all over the Midwest and the East Coast. The orientation was to share the love of traditional music and to teach how to play the instruments. The crafts featured a large collection of talented midwestern artists who made birch bark canoes, carved wood in the Germanic and Nordic tradition or painted in a Scandinavian style called rosemaling.

Many who worked at the university served on the board of the festival and donated hours of their time to make the festival work. The university generously hosted the festival for almost 10 years, every Labor Day weekend.

Fred moved to California in 1987, where he continued to teach economics at several community colleges. He continued to write music and give concerts at colleges including UCLA, Pomona and Oberlin.

He then went on to research a group of people that had been forgotten, the Hobos, who emerged during the Great Depression. Hobos traveled the rails, leaving home and families during that desperate economic time, looking for work and a way to survive. He met and talked to many of the old Hobos, collecting their stories, songs and poetry. This collection turned into a documentary film called “Hobos,” which was published in 2008 and is being shown at festivals around the country.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, Nov. 14, at Studio City’s Universalists Church. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, 724 Walcott Ave., Beacon, N.Y. 12508; www.clearwater.org.

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/article_8bb4387a-c5b2-11de-8734-001cc4c03286.html

Folk Alliance International is pleased to announce the establishment of the Mike Seeger Scholarship Fund.

Created in memory of Mike Seeger, who as a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers received a 2004 Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award, this fund will pay for transportation and an honorarium to bring a traditional musician or other tradition bearer to attend the FAI Conference each year to participate in panels and performances; the artist’s conference registration fee and hotel accommodation will be donated by Folk Alliance International.

Mike Seeger spent his entire life tracking down many strands of Old Time Music tradition, including singers, dancers and instrumentalists from many corners of the United States and from dozens of cultural and racial groups. He collected material wherever he went, and taught the music in person and on a succession of vinyl records, cassette tapes, VHS and DVD recordings. As much as anyone could, Mike got people to learn to play, and gave exposure to the old music and musicians at the same time.

We propose to continue that practice within Folk Alliance, for the same reasons and in the same ways. There are two invited recipients of the first Mike Seeger Scholarship: 93 year old Violet Hensley of Yellville, Arkansas, fiddle player/fiddle maker; and Sharde Thomas, the late Otha Turner’s 19 year old granddaughter, who carries on the traditions he taught her of making and playing cane fifes.

Those wishing to contribute to the Mike Seeger Scholarship Fund to support bringing traditional artists to future conferences can make a donation at any time to Folk Alliance in any amount, via credit card, PayPal, or check made payable to Folk Alliance; please indicate “Mike Seeger Scholarship Fund.” More information is available at www.folk.org.

RIFTON – Nothing against President Obama, but a pastor with the Bruderhof in Rifton says folk singer and pacifist Pete Seeger of Beacon should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama was named this year’s recipient last week. Pastor Johann Christoph Arnold, who knew and marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said people like him, who gave his life for peace, should be honored with the award.

“To me it’s sad that the requirements have been so diluted that now it’s mostly politicians getting the prize instead of people like Pete Seeger,” he said. “Pete has given his entire life to peace. If anyone should deserve the Peace Prize in my eyes, it would be Pete Seeger.”

President Obama has fostered a “new climate of diplomacy and openness in Washington and in the world, a vast improvement over his bomb-first, ask-questions-later predecessor,” said Pastor Arnold. “But, campaign promises and political realities aside, he has yet to demonstrate a commitment to a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan.”

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/October09/12/Seeger_Nobel-12Oct09.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Pete Seeger Joins Health Care Rally as Headliner Nyack, NY, September 28, 2009 – Pete Seeger has joined an impressive roster of musicians that will headline the Health Care For All Rally at Memorial Park in Nyack, NY on October 4. The 90-year-old folk singer, national treasure, and tireless activist is joined by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Tom Chapin in performing at the park’s gazebo. Also scheduled to perform is New York City blues rocker Emory Joseph and The Roues Brothers, a popular local band. The event advocates for universal health care. The grassroots group which organized the rally, Health Care for All Now, believes that affordable, equitable, and quality health care is a human right. The event is co-sponsored by The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rockland Progressive Dems, Spring Valley, NAACP, Nyack NAACP, WESPAC Foundation, Organizing for America, and Rockland Women’s Political Caucus. *Health Care For All Rally* Oct. 4 4:30 pm-7:30 pm. Memorial Park, 53 Piermont Ave (at Depew Ave.) Nyack, NY Public information line: (845) 512-3261 http://healthcareforall.tripod.com *FOR MORE INFORMATION*, call media contact Cliff Weathers of at (917) 202-6854.

These great photos of Mike and Pete Seeger performing at the 2005 Clearwater Festival were generously sent by Econosmith, a duo of professional photographers who do great work at folk festivals and other events.

With a career spanning more than half a century, renowned folk artist, political activist, and avid environmentalist, Pete Seeger, turned 90 in May of 2009.

In honor of the milestone birthday, a multi-generational roster of artists, whose music has been shaped by Seeger’s vision, gathered at Madison Square Garden on May 3 to celebrate his lifetime achievement. Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday Celebration from Madison Square Garden will premiere in HD on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances on Thursday, July 30 at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings).

Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

Joining Seeger for this extraordinary concert event were more than 40 artists, including Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Richie Havens, Roger McGuinn, Ani DiFranco, Taj Mahal, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, and many others who performed songs inspired by Seeger’s music and activism. Concert highlights include Seeger leading the audience in a rousing sing-along of “Amazing Grace.“ Other classic favorites compelling the enthusiastic audience to join in were “We Shall Overcome“ and “This Land Is Your Land.“

Born to a large family of musicians, young Peter first learned to play the ukulele, graduating to the five-string banjo in the mid-1930s, ultimately mastering the instrument and, in the process, galvanizing the American folk music movement. A pioneer of protest music, Seeger’s anti-Vietnam War songs, including the now famous “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?“ and “Turn, Turn, Turn,“ as well his interpretation of the Civil Rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome,“ garnered mainstream attention in the 1960’s, revitalizing the genre and paving the way for countless other activist musicians-including Bob Dylan-to achieve widespread acclaim.

The concert was a benefit for the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit, environmental organization created by Seeger to bring awareness to the importance of protecting the Hudson River and our other natural resources.

In February 2008, THIRTEEN co-produced and broadcast the first and only authorized biography of Seeger, American Masters: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. The film was awarded a Primetime Emmy.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

Visit Great Performances Online at www.pbs.org/gperf for additional information about this and other programs.

Fishkill

Memorial Day parade and service – Village of Fishkill. 10:30 a.m. Monday. Parade from Church Street to Monument Square, Broad and Main streets, where memorial service takes place. Guest speaker is Pete Seeger. Hosted by the village and VFW Post No. 1286. 845-897-4430.

The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger
Alec Wilkinson
Knopf

By Kel Munger 

Pete Seeger never meant to be a well-known and controversial folk singer. That much is clear from Alec Wilkinson’s short but sweet biography. But singing came naturally to Seeger, and his fascination with folk music led to his gathering variants of songs and recording what usually became the canonical version.

Seeger also didn’t intend to be a symbol of leftist politics and stubborn American honor, as he became with his 1955 appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. But The Protest Singer includes the transcript from Seeger’s appearance as an appendix, which tells far more about his no-nonsense American attitudes than anything—except perhaps Seeger’s songs.

Wilkinson, who published a shorter version of The Protest Singer in The New Yorker, spent time with Seeger on his farm. He leads readers to see that, at his core, the great folk musician is about as conservative as it gets. Seeger believes the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean exactly what they say; his insistence on individual rights being considered something other than conservative says more about the times in which Seeger lived than it does about the songwriter himself.

The Protest Singer is less a full biography than it is a thoughtful essay about Seeger’s life, published as he turned 90. It bears the stamp of Seeger’s personality as he is today, looking back on a life that included most of the great struggles of the 20th century.

We learn that Seeger left off his Communist membership because he “never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization.” That didn’t—and doesn’t—stop the right from characterizing Seeger as a left-wing threat, even when singing something as innocuous as “Old Dan Tucker.”

But it’s songs like “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” an anti-war allegory from the Vietnam era, that get people in an uproar. The song was censored on his 1967 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV appearance.

And the big controversy around Seeger threatening to pull the plug on Bob Dylan? You know, when Dylan infamously “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965? Seeger’s complaint wasn’t about Dylan’s amplifier—Howlin’ Wolf already used one—but that the distortion made it impossible to understand the lyrics; he thought “Maggie’s Farm” was a great song.

Wilkinson details things like how Seeger built his family’s home with his own hands, with the help of friends, and how he made a living singing even though he was blacklisted and banned from TV and radio. Now, thanks to Bruce Springsteen’s popular cover album of Seeger’s songs, the songwriter’s a little better known among the younger set—but not too much.

The folk singer’s portrait emerges as one of a man more concerned with songs that people actually sing than with what they ought to sing, more concerned with what people actually do than with what they ought to do. And this is rare: Seeger is more a musical journalist with a deep curiosity for the lives of others than anything resembling an ideologue.

As Wilkinson describes in detail, some students at college concerts think Seeger is the father of rocker Bob Seger. Others are too young to even make that misconnection. But by the time Seeger leaves the stage, they’ve all sung along to “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” and understand that American folk music is about life, complete with heartbreak, trouble and hard work.

Source: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=979759