5 September 2016

Hey! You can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union!

No Labor Day should pass without at least one rousing performance of Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid. On Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, Billy Bragg and the New York City Labor Chorus did the honors.

Folk musicians can be so serious that listening to their music is painful, but the lively arrangements of The Weavers, the group most associated with Seeger, made listening to folk music fun. Their harmonies set the mark for the folk revival of the sixties. In Deep Blue Sea, below, Ronnie Gilbert’s soaring contralto makes the chorus sail. Odetta’s version trudges.