Seeger, Mike, 1933-2009

Anglo-American early country musician Ernest V. Stoneman of Virginia; fiddler Charlie Bowman, originally from Tennessee; guitarist Sam McGee of Franklin, Tenn.; early country and cowboy musician Edward L. Crain of Texas; banjo player Doc Walsh, member of the Carolina Tar Heels; harmonica player Garley Foster; fiddler Alonza Elvis ("Tony") Alderman of Virginia; arranger Irene Spain; talent scout Polk Brockman; early country musician Wilber Ball of Kentucky; Blake Gardner and Bill Knapke; early country musician Tom Darby of Georgia; and John Edwards, Anglo-American record collector and authority on hillbilly music.

During the 1950s and 1960s, collector, folklorist, and traditional music performer Mike Seeger recorded interviews and performances of many legendary old-time and bluegrass musicians.

Born in New York City in 1933, Mike Seeger has devoted his life to collecting and performing music of the rural South. His father, Charles Seeger, was a musicologist, and his mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, a composer, educator, and arranger of folk songs. Along with his siblings, Peggy, Penny, and half-brother Pete, Seeger grew up with music and politics at the very root of his home experience. He began playing the guitar at age 18, and, during his career as a traditional folksinger, he also played banjo, fiddle, jaw harp, mouth harp (harmonica), quills, lap dulcimer, mandolin, and autoharp.

In the mid-1950s, Seeger began attending and recording bluegrass performances at clubs and country-music parks near Baltimore and Washington, D.C. These venues, such as the New River Ranch near Rising Sun, Md., proliferated in a region where transplanted southerners had moved to find employment.

In September 1958, Mike Seeger, along with John Cohen and Tom Paley, formed the New Lost City Ramblers. This band was an integral part of the folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s. Contrary to the smooth, modernized version of traditional music being sung by urbanites, the New Lost City Ramblers made a conscious effort to perform the more authentic, unrefined style attributed to rural tradition. By studying the commercial recordings of hillbilly music recorded in the 1920s-1940s, bluegrass of the post-war period, and field recordings in the Library of Congress, members of the Ramblers immersed themselves in traditional music. They began to visit traditional musicians who had made the early recordings, and often these musicians appeared on stage with the New Lost City Ramblers during their performances. Seeger eventually produced numerous field recordings and videos for documentary use and later organized tours featuring traditional musicians. He also conducted interviews with many older rural musicians.

Throughout his career, Mike Seeger created a musical legacy that fused the past with the present and preservation with presentation of traditional music. Through his tireless efforts as a performing musician and documentarian, Mike Seeger helped make the music of working class people more accessible to a vast audience far beyond its rural southern roots. Seeger died in Lexington, Va., in August 2009.