Seeger was born in New York and grew up in Maryland and Washington D.C. His father,
Charles Louis Seeger Jr., was a composer and pioneering
ethnomusicologist, investigating both American folk and non-Western music. His mother,
Ruth Crawford Seeger, was a composer.[5] His eldest half-brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older half-brother, John Seeger, taught for years at the
Dalton School in Manhattan. His next older half brother was
Pete Seeger. His uncle,
Alan Seeger, the poet who wrote "I have a rendezvous with Death", was killed during the
First World War. Seeger was a self-taught musician who began playing stringed instruments at the age of 18. He also sang
Sacred Harp with British folk singer
Ewan MacColl and his son, Calum. Seeger's sister
Peggy Seeger, also a well-known folk performer, married MacColl, and his sister Penny wed
John Cohen, a member of Mike's musical group,
New Lost City Ramblers.[6]
The family moved to Washington D.C. in 1936 after his father's appointment to the music division of the
Resettlement Administration. While in Washington D.C., Ruth Seeger worked closely with
John and
Alan Lomax at the Archive of American Folk Song at the
Library of Congress to preserve and teach American folk music. Ruth Seeger's arrangements and interpretations of American Traditional folk songs in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s are well regarded.[citation needed]
Musical career
At about the age of 20, Mike Seeger began collecting songs by traditional musicians on a tape recorder.[1] Folk musicians such as
Lead Belly,
Woody Guthrie,
John Jacob Niles, and others were frequent guests in the Seeger home.[1][7]
In 1958 he co-founded the
New Lost City Ramblers, an
old-timestring band in New York City, during the
Folk Revival. The other founding members included
John Cohen and
Tom Paley. Paley later left the group in 1962[8] and was replaced by
Tracy Schwarz. The New Lost City Ramblers directly influenced countless musicians in subsequent years. The Ramblers distinguished themselves by focusing on the traditional playing styles they heard on old
78rpm records of musicians recorded during the 1920s and 1930s. Tracy was also in Mike's other band, Strange Creek Singers. So was Mike's former wife,
Alice Gerrard. She was Alice Seeger in that band and sang and played guitar in it. The other people in Strange Creek Singers were bass player and singer
Hazel Dickens and banjo player Lamar Grier. Mike sang and played guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, autoharp, and harmonica in the band.
"Seeger sings with spunk and authenticity, plays eight acoustic instruments, and taps his foot pretty good, and even if you (and I) can't dance to it, I guarantee you somebody can."
Seeger received six Grammy nominations and was the recipient of four grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts,[1] including a 2009
National Heritage Fellowship, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.[10] His influence on the folk scene was described by
Bob Dylan in his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. He was a popular presenter and performer at traditional music gatherings such as
Breakin' Up Winter.
Eight days before his 76th birthday, Mike Seeger died at his home in
Lexington, Virginia, on August 7, 2009, after stopping cancer treatment.[2][11]
^"Mike Seeger: Musician, Cultural Scholar, and Advocate". National Endowment for the Arts, National Heritage Fellowships. National Endowment for the Arts. 2009. Archived from
the original on June 2, 2010. Retrieved August 8, 2009. Bess Lomax Hawes NEA National Heritage Fellowship
^"Recipient History". International Bluegrass Music Association. 2023. Retrieved February 25, 2024.