In early 1961,
Pete Seeger
, long the flagship artist of the tiny
Folkways Records
label, signed to the major label
Columbia Records
. In August 1961,
Columbia
released the first product of the association, the live LP
Story Songs
. But
Folkways
, which under the terms of the agreement could continue to exploit its association with
Seeger
, countered the same month with its own new
live album,
Sing Out with Pete!
The release was cobbled together from unused parts of concerts
had previously mined for albums, including a set with the late
Big Bill Broonzy
that produced the leadoff track,
"Study War No More (Down by the Riverside),"
and a couple of selections (
"I'm on My Way to Canaan's Land,"
"Hold On"
) from
's show at
the Village Gate
in the company of
Memphis Slim
and
Willie Dixon
. Another bluesman,
Lightnin' Hopkins
, makes an appearance on
"Oh, Mary Don't You Weep."
As those song titles suggest, this is a collection frequently consisting of spirituals that had been taken over by the civil rights movement. But it is also a miscellany in which
contributes an antiwar folk song (
"Mrs. McGrath"
), a song in German from the Spanish Civil War (
"Freiheit"
), and a couple of his greatest hits (
"Wimoweh,"
"If I Had a Hammer [Hammer Song]"
). As usual, he exerts himself to get his audiences -- whether at Yale or Chicago universities, at
Carnegie Hall
, or in the tiny
Village Gate
in Greenwich Village -- not only to sing along, but to do so in multi-part harmony.
' abrupt editing, which cuts off applause and even the last syllable of the last word on occasion, interrupts the flow, but then this is a grab bag, not a fully realized concert recording. ~ William Ruhlmann