Essential Pete Seeger CD

 Could have been much better
As a single-disc introduction to Pete Seeger, this release has some merit. However, it raises more questions than it answers. First of all, why limit it to a single disc, when most albums in Sony/Columbia's "Essential" series are twin-CD affairs? Is it intended to imply that there simply isn't enough "essential" Seeger to fill two discs (or even properly fill one, given that this one is less than 50 minutes long)? If so, the implication is so ridiculous that it hardly warrants refutation. Then again, of the 15 tracks on this album, three ("If I Had a Hammer", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and the Almanac Singers' version of "Talking Union") have been licensed from Smithsonian Folkways and one from MCA (The Weavers' "commercial" version of "Goodnight Irene"). Such borrowing might have made sense in the context of a much broader collection of tracks, for the purpose of injecting it with a bit of perspective. On such a sparse anthology, it gives the impression that Sony/Columbia that does not own the rights to enough Seeger tracks to put together a decent set. That impression, ridiculous as it is, is reinforced by the fact that five of the remaining tracks are sourced to the "Greatest Hits" album (which suggests someone at Sony couldn't be bothered to ascertain which long-players the tracks originally came from), reissued with bonus tracks by Sony just a year or two ago. Actually the duplication factor is somewhat higher. What makes this particularly lamentable is the fact that, quite apart from the unreleased recording sessions and concerts presumed to be in Columbia's vaults, the majority of Seeger's excellent LPs on Columbia have never been issued on CD at all. As Dave Marsh accurately puts it in the booklet that accompanies this release, "In the last 50 years, nobody in American music has been more influential than Pete Seeger." The booklet also contains sparkling testimonials from the likes of Eric Andersen, Billy Bragg, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Donovan, Bruce Cockburn and Roger McGuinn - the intention presumably being to impress upon novices the significance of Seeger. But it is Sony itself that needs, more than anyone else, to appreciate his importance. Proof of that could take the shape of, first, resuming the CD reissues of Seeger's Columbia albums (a program that stalled some time in the last century), and then reassessing the quality and worth of all the material that sits in the vaults, and giving the public access to at least some of it. It is an absolute travesty that albums such as "The Bitter and the Sweet", "I Can See a New Day", "Strangers and Cousins", "Pete Seeger Now", "Young vs Old" and "Rainbow Race" remain unavailable. It is high time Sony gave this wonderful body of work the respect it unquestionably deserves (as some wise person in the company's hierarchy had the good sense to do some 15 years ago, when "We Shall Overcome" was rereleased as "The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert". That said, as an entry point to Pete Seeger's repertoire (and one must hope that a proportion of every generation will be guided towards that entry point), "Essential" doesn't compare too badly with the "Greatest Hits" (despite being something of a wasted opportunity, for the reasons stated above; one can only wish that sufficient imagination had at least been exercised to include a few once-more-highly-topical tracks such as "Bring 'em Home", "The Torn Flag", "Down by the Riverside" and, at long last, "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" - which Columbia refused to release as a single back in the 1960s). Arguably superior to both and decidedly more comprehensive, however, is Vanguard's selection of Folkways-licensed tracks, also titled "The Essential Pete Seeger".
Submitted by mahirali (Sydney, Australia) 
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