The Weavers and The McCarthy Era
In 1948, Fred Hellerman formed the Weavers with Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert and Lee Hays. Hellerman wrote and co-wrote some of their hits. Because of his involvement with left-wing groups during the 1930s and 1940s, Fred Hellerman came under suspicion of Communist sympathies during the McCarthy era.
In 1950, Fred Hellerman was named, along with the rest of the Weavers, in the anti-communist tract Red Channels and was placed on the industry blacklist. The Weavers, unable to perform on television, radio, or in most music halls, broke up in 1952, although they periodically held reunion concerts, the last in 1981, shortly before Lee Hays' death.
Read more about this topic: Fred Hellerman
Famous quotes containing the words mccarthy and/or era:
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The great pagan world of which Egypt and Greece were the last living terms ... once had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, a science in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magic and charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)