YEAR
1996
INDUCTED BY
Harry Belafonte & Arlo Guthrie
CATEGORY
Early Influences
Unsinkable in his convictions, the formative folk singer Pete Seeger performed songs with passion and conscience.
His influence on folk music is inestimable. Seeger’s music and morals were a package deal—in a time of censorship of leftist views, he chose to go to jail rather than abandon his beliefs.
Pete Seeger
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Judy Collins
Pete Seeger has always walked the road less traveled.
A tall, lean fellow with long arms and legs, high energy and a contagious joy of spirit, he set everything in motion, singing in that magical voice, his head thrown back as though calling to the heavens, making you see that you can change the world, risk everything, do your best, cast away stones.
“Bells of Rhymney,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “One Grain of Sand,” “Oh, Had I a Golden Thread” -songs scattered along our path like jewels, from the present into the past, and back, along the road to the future.
