Folklore Productions - Mike Seeger

Folklore Productions’ longtime valued colleague and good friend Mike Seeger died on Friday, August 7, 2009 from the combined effects of multiple myeloma and leukemia. He was 75.

Mike Seeger was one of the most influential voices of the generation that rediscovered American vernacular music in the 1950s and 60s and, in doing so, gave a new shape to American culture as a whole.

“Sometimes you know things have to change... Somebody holds the mirror up, unlocks the door, and your head has to go into a different place,” wrote Bob Dylan in his autobiography Chronicles. “Mike Seeger had that effect on me. He played on all the various planes, the full index of the old-time styles, [and] he played these songs as good as it was possible to play them. What I had to work at, Mike already had in his genes.”

Mike was born in New York City on August 15, 1933 and grew up near Washington, D.C. His father Charles Seeger was a distinguished scholar who once headed the UCLA Folklore and Ethnomusicology Department, and his mother Ruth Crawford Seeger was a noted composer and folk-song collector. His sister Peggy and half-brother Pete would become figures of towering importance in the postwar folk music revival.

He began singing folk songs as a child. By the end of his teens he had begun playing other instruments and was playing with Peggy for square dances. In 1958, Mike and fellow traditional music enthusiasts John Cohen and Tom Paley formed The New Lost City Ramblers. They ignited the imagination of a generation of musicians who, following their example, investigated 78rpm discs of the 1920s and 30s by forgotten musicians like Charlie Poole and Uncle Dave Macon, presenting a vast repertoire of songs, tunes and playing styles. Between playing with the Ramblers, participating as both performer and board member in the early Newport Folk Festivals, and making albums for Folkways, Mike tracked down and taped some of the musicians he had heard on old records, such as Ernest “Pop” Stoneman, Sam and Kirk McGee, and Dock Boggs. The Ramblers realized before most of their contemporaries how the histories of white and black music in the South were interwoven.

The Ramblers continued to play, with occasional periods of inactivity, for the next 50 years (Paley was replaced in 1962 by Tracy Schwarz), but Mike, always musically restless and inquisitive, also formed other alliances, such as the Strange Creek Singers with Schwarz, Hazel Dickens, Lamar Grier and Alice Gerrard. He and Alice also worked and recorded as a duo, and were married for ten years.

Mike produced 36 documentary recordings of traditional music and 51 recordings between NLCR, solo records, and other collaborations. Amongst these were Tipple, Loom and Rail (1966), a collection of old-time songs about coal mines, cotton mills and railroads, Music From The True Vine(1972), and his Grammy-nominated Solo - Old-Time Country Music (1991). He mastered a variety of traditional instruments as well as the jews harp, quills, autoharp, harmonica and more. He gave an accurate impression, rather than a mere imitation, of regional styles from many parts of the South. Retrograss, a 1999 collaboration with David Grisman and the late John Hartford, ingeniously recast rock’n’roll songs by the likes of Chuck Berry and The Beatles into old-time musical styles.

Mike served on numerous boards and committees associated with the Newport Folk Festival, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the National Folk Festival and the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded him four grants between 1975 and 1987; he was nominated for six Grammy Awards; he held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984; he was given The Rex Foundation’s Ralph J. Gleason Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995; and was awarded honorary membership of the Society for American Music in 2003. He was especially pleased to learn, shortly before his death, that he had been awarded the 2009 the NEA's Bess Hawes National Heritage Fellowship Award. Always committed to expanding the knowledge of American traditional music, he performed in Africa, Japan and Australasia, and throughout Europe.

Diagnosed with a slow-growing lymphoma nearly a decade ago, Mike underwent occasional treatment for that condition while continuing to perform, record, teach, and travel. In July of 2009 he discovered he had developed a second and very aggressive cancer. In the same forthright manner in which he had always lived his life he prepared for his death, refusing high risk treatments and choosing instead to enter home hospice care. His final weeks were spent peacefully, surrounded by the loving care of his wife, his sons, and his sister Peggy.

He is survived by his wife, Alexia Smith; three sons by his first marriage to Marge Ostrow: Kim, Chris Arley, and Jeremy; four step-children with Alice Gerrard: Cory, Jenny, Joel, and Jesse; his sisters Peggy and Barbara; and his half-brothers Pete and John.

For more information, contact Mitch Greenhill or Mary Katherine Aldin at Folklore Productions.