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Transatlantic Troubadours: Pete Seeger, John Hasted and The

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Transatlantic Troubadours: Pete Seeger, John Hasted and The Transatlantic Troubadours: Pete Seeger,John Hastedand the English Folk SongRevival E. David Gregory When Pete Seegerset foot on British soil in October 1961 mind his goal of making music like the Almanac Singers'. for a month-longtour of English and Scottishfolk clubs, he was Through the WMA he eventually encountereda kindred spirit, alreadya legend. Knowing the affection and admiration felt for fellow Party memberand folklorist A. L. (Bert) Lloyd. Hasted Petethroughout the London folk music community, Bruce Dun- later recalledthat on meeting Lloyd he casuallyasked him if he net, managerof Ewan MacCol1 and Peggy Seeger'sSingers' wanted to start an Almanac-stylegroup in England. To his as- Club, took the gamble of booking the 5,00> seat Royal Albert tonishment, Bert's normally high-pitched and squeaky voice Hall for a farewell concert. It was the first time a folk singer droppedabout an octaveand he replied very quietly, "Passion- had appearedat that most prestigious of venues. If anything, ately".2 Pete was even more popular in Britain than in his native USA, This was the encouragementHasted needed. But there was where he was still fighting a prolonged legal battle with the a problem. Where on earth could you get a folk guitar in Lon- House Un-American Activities Committee. He chose a good don in the late forties, let alone a long-neckedbanjo? And even time to visit Britain. The (second)folk song revival had just if you did find the right instruments, how could you learn to enteredits boom phase,and "the movement" (as it was some- play them? This is how Hasted describedthe situation in his times called) had a mass following at long last. But how had Memoirs: Pete come to be acclaimedin England as "one of the world's great folk singers"V When I set out to get hold of a guitar in London, it took me nearly a year to acquire one with a flat front During the 50s Pete had somefonnidable promotersin the and a hole in the middle. It was an old Martin, and it "old country." They included his half-sister Peggy, her partner lasted me until the Suez demonstrationin Whitehall, Ewan MacColl, and their mutual friend, broadcasterand collec- where it was broken by a policeman Dance band tor Alan Lomax. But the story of Pete'sinfluence on the English guitars, with curved fronts and S-shapedholes, were revival goes even further back, to 1946 and his days in New lousy acoustically. Real classical guitars had to be York with the Almanac Singers. One of the 78 rpm records he imported from Spain, and would take only very light madein 1941with Mill Lampell, Lee Hays and Woody Guthrie steel strings instead of their normal gut and covered was "Talking Union." You couldn't buy that disc in England silk. As for a twelve-string guitar, I had to make the during the forties, but merchantseaman Bob Hinds picked up a thing myself, out of an old six-string. Classicalguitar copy while his ship was in an American port and when he got was taught in London, notably by John William's fa- back to England he played it to a friend, a young Oxford phys- ther, and dance-bandguitar was taught by Ivor Mai- icist namedJohn Hasted. As soon as he heard the disc, Hasted rants There had only beena handful of singers-with- knew instantly that he wanted, above anything else, to make guitar in Britain, and thesewere either troubadourstyle music like the Almanacs'. John Hastedis not very well known with classical guitar and rather twee tenor voice; or these days, even in English folk music circles. He might be cowboy-style, wearing Stetsonhat and chaps.3 termed-with some justification-"the forgotten man" of the English revival. Yet in fact he played a key role in the revival Hasted'ssolution to the problem of how to learn Almanac-style for more than a decade.One of the many things he did was to guitar and banjo was to go to the horse's mouth. As a commun- imitate and popularisePete Seeger'sway of playing guitar and ist he was well awareof the Peoples'Songs organization in the banjo. USA and had seencopies of its Bulletin. So why not write to As a studentin Oxford before the war Hastedhad sungreg- Pete Seegerfor help? He did so, and Pete respondedwith de- ularly in New College Choir, and his left-wing political beliefs tailed instructions, including tablature, on how to play both had led him to join the newly formed Workers' Music Associa- guitar and banjo. He encouragedHasted to begin by learning the tion, foundedby the communistcomposer Alan Bush. A career Carterfamily "Churchlick" as his basicstrumming style. By the move in 1948 took Hasted to London, to work at University end of the decade,Pete's correspondencestudent was confident College. He was free, in his spare time, to assist Bush in di- enoughto passon his new-found instrumentalskills to members recting the WMA Choir, and before long he was also running of the London Youth Choir, and to form his own folk group, the the WMA's Topic Singers and the London Youth Choir. All first of severalcalled The Ramblers. three groups sang a mixture of English traditional folk songs (usually in arrangementsby Bush or by VaughanWilliams), un- Bert Lloyd and I fonned The Ramblers,consisting of ion songs, left-wing anthems such as "The Red Flag" and a Bert himself, guitarist Neste Revald, myself, and Jean smatteringof Almanacmaterial, including "If I Had a Hammer." Butler, an American girl who had plenty of experience It wasn't folk music, but it was close. And Hasted still had in singing with five-string banjo for Americanunions, and had often performed with the Almanacs.The namefor Hasted was no purist. Like Seeger's,his concept of folk the group camedirectly from Woody's songwhich Jean music was broad and undogmatic:an eclectic mix of traditional sang for us The Ramblers lasted only a couple of and contemporarymaterial, British and American, political and years as a group, but the sound we made was solid, non-political. By this time he wasan accomplished"semi-profes- sinceBert had a high-up voice and I was bass-baritone. sional" musician, and he had a good voice, but he had a low Jean'svoice and banjo were authenticAlmanac. But we opinion of himself as a folk singer. never possessedor sang into a tape-recorderor even a wire-recorder. Only the BBC had those, and we were I could never havemuch successas a solo singerof the not exactly their territory 4 sort of material I collected, since my pleasantand pa- tronizing Oxford accentprecluded anything except play- One of The Ramblers' first performanceswas at a Gilly of the acting and mimicry, which is not a satisfactorybasis for Clerical Workers' Union addressedby ClementAttIee, an occa- a singer of folksongs. But there was in the London sion on which the Prime Minister and Labour Party leaderwas Youth Choir no shortageof good down-to-earthtalent, roundly booed. Many more such unpaid gigs followed, at left- eager to take part in a folksong revival More and wing demonstrationsin support of strikes or the peacemove- more performanceswere given by small groups of our ment, and the group developeda quite extensiveprotest reper- Choir members, maybe three or four singers, with toire of Guthrie and Leadbelly material, union songs, Negro guitar, and a dancer.There would be solo songs,group spirituals, African freedomsongs, and suchanti-American ditties singing, a dance,and occasionallya rehearsedscript. At as "YankeeGo Home." But althoughhe campaignedvociferous- first I had no unique folk group of my own, but grad- ly againstthe presenceof American troops and weaponson Brit- ually one emerged,the membershipchanging less and ish soil, Hastedremained a passionatechampion of the music of less. As time went by our repertoire became less the Almanacs, and a devoted fan of Woody Guthrie and Pete directly political in content.6 Seeger. Bert Lloyd stimulatedHasted's interest in English traditional This move of Hasted'saway from overt political materialparal- song, and around the time that The Ramblersbroke up Hasted leled Pete Seeger'sown careerduring the late forties and early also met collector Peter Kennedy. Encoumgedby Kennedyand fifties, when he was a memberof the Weavers.Indeed, in the by Alan Lomax to try his hand at field-collecting, Hasteddid so early fifties Petewas known in England primarily as a member in the West Country (where he later recordedCharlie Wills) and of the Weavers.The Weavers' single releaseson Deccawere a- in the Lake District. In the early fifties tape-recorderswere still vailable in Britain, and sold fairly well, so that the group quick- few and far betweenin England, so he initially used the tradi- ly built up a solid following. Seegerwas lost to the public eye tional methodof pen and paper, as he recalled in his autobiog- during most of the fifties, when he experiencedblack-listing in mphy: the US entertainmentindustry and fought his prolongedstruggle with the House Un-American Activities Committee. But his At first 1 collected songsby the old methodof copying stand madehim a hero to British communistsand their sympa- the words and music out on a notepadwhilst the singer thizers. was singing them. Singershad been more patient with Hastedkept in touch with Seegerby mail, and was an avid "dictation" to Cecil Sharp than we found them to be reader of Sing Out!, a magazineSeeger helped to form in the fifty yearslater. 1 soondevised a shorthandof my own, wake of the People'sSongs Bulletin. It was he who first argued but even so 1 couldn't easily keep up with the singers.
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