Musical tribute for Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger’s been a lot of things to a lot of people over the past nine decades: “A musician, singer, songwriter, folklorist, labor activist, environmentalist, peace advocate,” listed actor Tim Robbins, at the start of an all-star gathering at Madison Square Garden last May to celebrate the performer’s 90th birthday.

This celebration has been captured as a “Great Performances” special, which airs at 5 p.m. Saturday on KCTS (and repeats at 11 p.m. the next day). It’s full of passion and ideals, nostalgia for past gains and hope for the future.

Joining Seeger are more than 40 artists including Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Richie Havens, Roger McGuinn, Ani DiFranco, Taj Mahal, Steve Earle, Tom Morello and Dave Matthews.

The gathered talent invites the audience to join in singing “We Shall Overcome,” while reminding us that it was Seeger who helped convey it from a labor song to a civil-rights anthem.

“Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season),” a signature hit for the Byrds 40 years ago, was written by Seeger (in collaboration with the Bible), and former Byrds member McGuinn is on hand to perform it as if it had been recorded yesterday.

Mellencamp sings “If I Had a Hammer (the Hammer Song),” a peace song so immersed in the culture it’s hard to believe Seeger could have written it at the dawn of the militaristic 1950s Red Scare.

Springsteen steps on stage to perform “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in duet with Morello, the former Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist.

During his spot, it’s Springsteen who perhaps best puts Seeger in perspective: “a walking, singing reminder of all of America’s history … a testament of the power of song to nudge history along.”

And though Seeger himself doesn’t sing onstage much anymore, he does what he’s been doing as long as he’s been singing: Leads others in song. Wiry and ruddy-faced in his jeans, cap and bright flannel work shirt, he urges the audience to take part in “Amazing Grace,” heartily assuring one and all, “There’s no such thing as a wrong note, as long as you’re singing.”

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Tags: arlo guthrie, pete seeger, pete seeger songs, peter paul and mary, this land is your land, this land is your land lyrics