Three years after the death of her husband and longtime musical partner, British folk giant Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger cheerfully describes her life as ”chaotic.”
”I`m footloose and fancy free,” says Seeger, who appears with Irish folkie Irene Scott Saturday at the Old Town School of Folk Music. ”I spend nearly all my time traveling and singing.”
Earlier this year, the London-based folk fixture teamed up with her half- brother, the American folk institution Pete Seeger, and her older sibling, Mike Seeger, for concerts in California. She and Mike joined forces again recently to record ”Animal Songs for Children,” a collection of critter tunes due out in December on Rounder.
Meanwhile, Seeger and Scott have released a new cassette tape of contemporary folk songs, called ”Almost Commercially Viable,” on their Golden Egg label. And Smithsonian/Folkways just released Seeger`s ”The Folkways Years 1955-1992: Songs of Love and Politics,” a collection of original and traditional tunes.
Not bad for a folk singer whom an insensitive manager dismissed as ”no spring chicken” and ”not commercially viable” a few years ago-and, in the process, inspired Seeger, 57, and Scott, 45, to dub their duo No Spring Chickens.
”It was really Irene`s idea,” Seeger says. ”There`s a story behind it.”
”After Ewan died, we needed a manager,” explains Scott, who has sung with Seeger off and on since 1983. ”So we arranged to meet (a potential manager) at a pub. He turned out to be about 49, with a leather jacket and ponytail.
”Everyone in the folk world knew that Ewan had just died, but this man was very tactless in his comments to Peggy (about MacColl),” Scott adds.
”Peggy was so upset that she went to the ladies` room to compose herself. As soon as she left, he turned to me and said: `Well, she`s no spring chicken, is she? And she`s not exactly commercially viable!`
”So we called ourselves No Spring Chickens and titled our tape `Almost Commercially Viable.` ”
As far as Seeger is concerned, getting older means getting better.
”Some of the best folk singers are older women,” she says. ”I feel that I`m singing better as I get older.”
Seeger, the daughter of musicologist Charles Seeger and folk singer Ruth Crawford Seeger, was exposed to classical and folk music as a child growing up near Washington, D.C. By age 17, she played piano, guitar and banjo; later, she mastered dulcimer, autoharp and concertina.
”My mother was my biggest musical influence,” she says. ”She encouraged me on any instrument I wanted to play.”
After studying music at Radcliffe College, Seeger began singing folk music professionally. In 1956, she traveled to London to work in a television production, met MacColl and fell in love.
”Our romance was complicated,” Seeger says. ”I was 21 when we met;
Ewan was 41, married and had a child. After about eight months I decided this (relationship) was no good and went back to America. Ewan called me and told me he had written a song for me. He sang it to me over the telephone, and it was `The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.` ” (In 1972, it became a No. 1 pop hit for Roberta Flack.)
Eventually, after MacColl straightened out his domestic situation, he and Seeger reunited in England and began working as a folk duo.
”Our partnership always felt quite equal,” Seeger says. ”He took the lead in a lot of (social and political) issues we tackled, but I was beginning to take the lead when he died.”
Today, Seeger`s songwriting energies are often directed toward women`s issues, though her concerts with Scott include a wide range of traditional, as well as contemporary, material. Her 1970 song ”Gonna Be an Engineer” became a feminist anthem, but Seeger admits it`s only in recent years that she has
”really applied feminism properly” in her songwriting.
”My husband`s main political push was the class struggle and the British trade union movement, which was quite macho, and he never really adapted to what the feminist struggle was about,” Seeger says. ”He had a wonderful feel for irony, and when you feel that a message is important, it`s hard to write a light song about it. But that`s what I`m trying to do now with the issues I write about.”
Seeger`s song ”B-Side,” for example, reverses men`s and women`s roles with comic effect.
”I have always felt that songs are a form of education as well as entertainment,” Seeger says. ”Songs go places that speeches can`t go. People may listen to speeches, but they tap their feet to a song and go out singing it and then sing it to their children.”
