What Would Pete Have Thought?

 I've kept viewing commercials on television for a car that begin and are accompanied throughout with Pete Seeger singing about waking up early to start a hard day at the mill. It shows a family or couple getting into  the fairly fancy car and backing out of their driveway but just missing being wrecked by a car passing speedily on the road.

Pete's tenor is of course unmistakable. I immediately began thinking about what he would have thought of his labor song being appropriated by a capitalistic car company to sell automobiles. Even though I see myself as a pragmatist (not to be confused with a foreign policy realist, thank you), it's very difficult for me to hear Pete Seeger singing and not be swept up in his love for the workers and the downtrodden. 

It makes me consider what I haven't done to strive towards the kinds of goals he espoused. And his voice has that timbre that always cuts right to one's essence. One of my favorite renditions was on an old Weavers album--maybe it was their reunion at Carnegie Hall--when the three tenors who had clocked time in the group joined in giving the old chestnut Wimoweh (which has since been popularized and somewhat profaned since the Weavers got it from its South African creators) a rousing workout. 

You hear Pete coming in and standing out with his extraordinarily distinctive tenor. It's almost as thrilling as his leading We Shall Overcome, shouting out a line after a huge rally crowd sings the one before.  Another similarly exciting moment hearing an even more marvelous voice stand out from a group is a now You Tubed scene from Showboat where Hattie McDaniel, Helen Morgan, and Irene Dunne start into Can't Help Loving That Man o' Mine. Right near the end, Paul Robeson walks into this 1936 movie clip and lends his glorious bass to the finale. It makes it absolutely perfect. I believe Pete was driving with Robeson to the concert at Peekskill when a right-wing mob stoned their car.

I remember being delighted when Pete was given the Kennedy Center Honors back in the 1990s, a solid achievement for Bill Clinton's Administration. Not everyone recalls that Pete and the Weavers were blacklisted and kept off television--then becoming the major entertainment medium--for many years. If someone had told me that that could happen... It was even better that underneath his uncharacteristic jacket up there in the Presidential box, he was wearing a work shirt.

I ended up wishing that this commercial had been aired before Pete passed on last year at 92. But I took some consolation from the probability that his estate would benefit--probably more richly than from any concert payday--and through it some worthy causes.