Appleseed Recordings - Pete Seeger Tribute CDs

Pete Seeger Tribute CDs

In 1997, for Appleseed’s first major project, Musselman approached numerous wellknown musicians and other creative artists (writer Studs Terkel, actor/writer/director/musician Tim Robbins) with a request to each record a song written, adapted or performed by Pete Seeger for a tribute album to highlight Seeger’s musical contributions and his tradition of mixing songs and political activism. The resultant 1998 2-CD Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger, included 37 newly recorded versions of Seeger-related songs by Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne & Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Terkel, Robbins, DiFranco and many others. The release won the American Federation of Independent Music Award as the “Top Independent Release of 1998,” and the duet by Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt on “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” was nominated for a 1999 Grammy as “Best Pop Collaboration.”

From Musselman’s list of fourteen suggested Seeger songs to cover for the Seeger tribute, Springsteen recorded six songs and submitted his version of the traditional African-American spiritual/modern civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” for the compilation. Years after its inclusion, Springsteen’s version of the song was used by NBC-TV news as the soundtrack to a video montage of self-sacrifice and suffering in New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, broadcast nightly for a week. Grieving families also played the song for comfort in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Springsteen later reused the track and some of the other songs Musselman had suggested) for his own 2006 CD release, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

The title song of Where Have All the Flowers Gone, recorded by Irish singers Tommy Sands and Dolores Keane, “The Cellist of Sarajevo” Vedran Smailovic, and a chorus of Catholic and Protestant Irish school children, was played daily outside the peace negotiations between Northern Ireland and England and was described by Minister of Parliament John Hume as “a vital bridge of hope and healing between the two sides.”

Appleseed issued a second multi-artist Seeger tribute, If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2, in 2001, and a final two-volume set in 2003, Seeds: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 3. The latter title was nominated for a “Best Traditional Folk Recording” Grammy award, and both releases also helped generate money for charitable and activist organizations. Seeds also contained an updated version of the Vietnam-era protest, “Bring Them Home,” recorded by Seeger, Bragg, DiFranco and Earle, on the day of the US invasion of Iraq with additional lyrics by Musselman. Springsteen later added some lyrics of his own and included the song in his live performances, TV appearances, and on the live CD/DVD from a Seeger Sessions tour.

Some of the profits generated by Appleseed’s three Seeger tributes were donated to the environmental Hudson River Sloop Clearwater organization to clean up New York’s Hudson and to help support Sing Out! magazine. Seeger was one of the founders of both Clearwater and the folk periodical.

In 2007, Appleseed worked with the Give Us Your Poor organization at UMass Boston to release Give Us Your Poor, another multi-artist CD designed to raise funds and public awareness about the rising crisis of homelessness in America. Among its exclusive tracks was the first-ever collaboration of Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger, performing together on the song “Hobo’s Lullaby.”