Pete Seeger

From a New York Times report:

Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday.  He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.

Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s and a mentor to younger folk

Seeger & Springsteen in DC, 01/18/2009

and topical singers in the ‘50s
and ‘60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock.  Bruce Springsteen drew the songs on his 2006 album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” from Seeger’s repertoire of traditional music about a turbulent American experience, and in 2009 he performed Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with Seeger at the Obama inaugural.  At a Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Seeger’s 90th birthday, Springsteen introduced him as “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along” (below).

Uncomfortable with the idea of stardom, Seeger used his celebrity to bring attention and contributions to causes that moved him, or to the traditional songs he wanted to preserve.

Seeger, Springsteen et al. “This Land Is Your Land”

Springsteen verbal tribute to Pete Seeger