Shelburne Falls resident Charlie King began listening to the music of Pete Seeger in the early 1960s before singing with him at a concert in 1976 and eventually calling him a friend until the folk legend’s death in 2014. Soon, he will see the famed musician’s mug whenever he mails a letter.
The U.S. Postal Service announced last week it is honoring the singer-songwriter by inducting him into its Music Icons Forever stamp series, with Pete Seeger Forever stamps being sold in panes of 16. This represents a reversal in how Seeger is viewed by his government, which once vilified him for his leftist beliefs and indicted him for contempt of Congress for his refusal to answer questions posed by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the United States.
“He was always controversial,” King said, “and I think (it’s good) to have his face on a stamp, as long as we don’t forget what he stood for, what he sang about, and just the history of how people were always trying to put him in jail or run him out of town on a rail.
“It’s important to not see him as a one-dimensional hero,” King continued. “He was so much more than a great folk singer, a great songwriter. He’s gone from being banned and shunned and chased to being a face on a postage stamp.”
The stamp’s art features a color-tinted, black-and-white photograph taken by the musician’s son, Dan Seeger, in the early 1960s. The elder Seeger is shown in left profile, singing and playing his iconic banjo. The square stamp pane resembles a vintage 45 rpm record sleeve.
King said he plans to visit his local Post Office and purchase 100 of the stamps.
The Rev. Sarah Pirtle, also a musician, said two friends rushed to the Post Office to buy her Pete Seeger stamps and she keeps them on her dining room table in Shelburne Falls to keep his inspiration close.
“Just as Pete’s songs continue to pour out hope, his face appearing on letters winging their way around the country is just what we need right now. You look at his face and see his belief in the best in us,” Pirtle wrote in an email. “You see his conscience, and he tells us to take heart that what one person can do will help uplift all of us.”
Pirtle organized a special Sunday service at All Souls Church in Greenfield on May 3, 2019 — what would have been Seeger’s 100th birthday — to celebrate his memory and legacy. She incorporated songs and spiritual lessons, accompanied by guitarist Michael Nix. Pirtle referred to Seeger as a musician, activist, teacher and guide who “sits on my shoulder.”
After his urge to race out and purchase stamps, King said, “my next reaction was, I was glad he was getting that recognition. I think he’s a major influence on 20th-century America and the 21st century. He’s certainly spanned both of those. There are lots of reasons — cultural and political reasons — to honor him.”
Seeger had a prolific career, becoming an iconic singer of protest music in support of civil rights, counterculture, workers’ rights and environmental causes. Among his best-known songs are “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” He also popularized the spiritual “We Shall Overcome.”
Seeger angered some by singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in February 1968, after CBS had censored a similar performance the previous September. The song — about a naive military captain who drowns while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II — is a not-so-veiled commentary on then-President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War.
An Army veteran and patriot, he at different times belonged to the Young Communist League and the Communist Party USA. For his political connections, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. His refusal to answer certain questions led to a jury convicting him of contempt of Congress, though an appeals court later overturned the conviction. However, his group, the folk quartet the Weavers, was blacklisted.
Amherst songwriter Paul Kaplan said a postage stamp is the least the U.S. government can do for Seeger after all these years.
“I think it is more than fitting,” he said. “It’s making up for what the government did to him, for prosecuting him.”
Kaplan noted his father, Samuel Kaplan, lost his job as a schoolteacher after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refusing “to name names.”
Paul Kaplan said he sang with Seeger in the Hudson River Sloop Singers, a Seeger-founded group of musicians who performed to raise awareness of pollution in the Hudson. Kaplan said he shared a stage with Seeger for a reunion about 10 years ago.
“He was supportive of so many people. He affected young people so much,” he said. “He was such a role model for so many of us.”
Eveline MacDougall, a Greenfield musician, said she met Seeger in Northampton in 1989 and became fast friends with him. She said the icon even visited a music workshop she held in 1990.
“He was so … humble and so not into being famous,” she recalled. “He was just a complete down-to-Earth guy.”
She said it is appropriate that Seeger is now on a postage stamp, because he was known to personally reply to fan mail. Asked what her friend would think of his government putting his image on a stamp decades after blacklisting him, MacDougall replied, “I’m sure that he would have found it amusing.”