Biography
The Almanac Singers endured for little more than twelve months and issued just three dozen tracks, yet their recordings stirred as much debate as admiration. Still, they ranked among the earliest ensembles formed expressly around political aims to commit material to disc, and the roster—Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Millard Lampell—represented a virtual catalog of leading voices in topical and mainstream folk circles over the ensuing two decades. The unit marked Seeger’s first formal alliance with Hays and supplied the initial professional thread connecting Seeger, Hays, and Guthrie; its resonance persisted more than half a century after the collective dissolved.
Their origins trace to 1940, when Seeger, Hays, and Lampell converged. Seeger and Hays had already performed at assorted leftist political gatherings, and Lampell, sharing quarters with Hays, began absorbing their rehearsals in the apartment Seeger often occupied. The three began casually once Lampell merged with the pair. They played benefit events for assorted political causes, and their unadorned, unassuming style proved immediately engaging; the calculated “hillbilly” presentation disarmed listeners who remained unaware of the pointed material ahead. After an electrifying appearance at the American Youth Congress gathering in Washington, D.C., during February 1941, where they entertained delegates—largely pacifists and leftists—with songs critical of Roosevelt and the looming war, the Almanac Singers solidified into an active ensemble.
Beyond their skill at crafting original material, Seeger, Hays, and Lampell excelled at reshaping traditional numbers by grafting contemporary references onto them, addressing labor mistreatment and perceived governmental indifference toward workers. They would enter gatherings of construction crews or factory hands, initially met with suspicion at the sight of guitar- and banjo-toting “hillbillies,” yet by the close of each set hundreds of workers joined the choruses and stood ready to endorse the organizers’ proposals.
The very designation “the Almanac Singers” was chosen to project the most plainspoken image possible. Seeger noted that rural households typically possessed only two volumes, the Bible and the Farmer’s Almanac—the first meant to guide them toward the hereafter, the second to aid them through the present.
Guthrie joined in spring 1941, and Sis Cunningham together with Bess Hawes (sister of Alan Lomax) eventually participated as well, though the six never recorded in that configuration. Additional musicians who appeared informally with the trio or quartet at various times included blues performers Leadbelly and Josh White along with folk singers Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennett. Although the Communist Party, headquartered only blocks from the apartment shared by Seeger, Hays, and Lampell, viewed the Almanacs as overly independent—particularly given their urban communal living arrangement—and occasionally irreverent, the organization nevertheless enlisted the group to advance its objectives. The singers became familiar presences at union halls and fundraising events tied to numerous left-leaning political circles.
Their repertoire remained inseparable from their political commitments, rendering any account of the group inseparable from the convictions that simultaneously propelled and ultimately undermined it. Every member maintained ties to leftist organizations, among them the Communist Party. Some involvement reflected youthful inexperience more than deep allegiance to Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. Moreover, prior to Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Communist Party had appeared to many Americans as the sole political outlet addressing the concerns of impoverished and working-class citizens. In addition, numerous Americans, especially intellectuals, retained respect for the Party because it alone among European political forces mounted consistent opposition to Hitler and fascism.
One of the Almanacs’ central aims was to draw labor organizations and their members into broader coalitions. They maintained staunch opposition to Roosevelt, citing what they regarded as inadequate presidential backing for workers’ rights—overlooking widespread upper-class animosity toward the president for excessive sympathy toward labor—and his enactment of the nation’s first peacetime draft legislation.
During spring 1941, following months of unsuccessful efforts, the Almanac Singers secured their initial recording session, resulting in Songs for John Doe. The album followed the Communist Party’s official isolationist stance—shaped by the prior year’s non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin—and urged resistance to American entry into the European conflict. The release appeared only weeks before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, prompting the group to distance itself partially from the record’s content.
Alan Lomax, future filmmaker Nicholas Ray, and NBC executive Joe Thompson facilitated the session; they persuaded Eric Bernay, proprietor of a midtown Manhattan record shop and the small Keynote imprint, that the Almanacs warranted investment. Bernay possessed prior leftist political experience and maintained an open musical outlook—he had helped organize sponsorship for the Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall several years earlier, an event for which John Hammond had sought Robert Johnson, only to learn of the blues artist’s death and instead engage Big Bill Broonzy. Bernay nevertheless remained cautious regarding the political implications of their songs and therefore released Songs for John Doe on the subsidiary Almanac Records imprint to shield Keynote from potential fallout.
Strong initial sales prompted Bernay to commission a second album, Talking Union, devoted to labor songs and issued directly on Keynote. The Almanacs continued voicing anti-Roosevelt sentiments, and at least one such recording reached Eleanor Roosevelt, who deemed it in questionable taste and reportedly provoked the president’s irritation. Nevertheless, the ensemble’s musical impact could not be denied. Although they drew repertoire from country and Western traditions, they were not performing within those idioms. In effect, the Almanac Singers helped establish folk music as a viable commercial category by becoming the first collective to market this body of work deliberately to a broad audience.
On 7 July 1941 the group taped another batch of songs, less overtly political in tone, during a hastily arranged session overseen by Alan Lomax. The purpose was to raise $250 toward purchasing a vehicle for a westward journey. The core quartet was occasionally supplemented by part-time participants Pete Hawes (also known as Joe Bowers) and his brother Butch (husband of Bess Lomax). The resulting tracks later surfaced across two albums, first on 78 rpm discs, subsequently on LPs, and ultimately on a single CD under the titles Sod Buster Ballads (a designation the members disliked) and Sea Chanties. The ensemble departed for California after completing the eighteen sides and remained unaware of the albums’ existence until their return months afterward.
The Almanac Singers’ trajectory climbed and declined swiftly. They garnered considerable notice from successful appearances at rallies, particularly during the western excursion. Once in California, however, internal tensions surfaced as divergent objectives came into view: Lampell’s political drive never matched the intensity of Seeger’s, and the fact that Lampell and Guthrie employed the group and its music partly to meet women rendered Lampell an object of suspicion and resentment. Lampell and Guthrie departed, while Seeger and Hays persisted, augmented by substitute musicians.
Several months later they returned east, where Seeger and Hays began establishing what became known as Almanac Houses—communal living spaces where aspiring performers could gather to play, listen, and, when necessary, reside. Their politics, which remained awkwardly pacifist amid Europe’s deteriorating situation and shifting American attitudes, precluded any durable stability or commercial breakthrough. Despite their leftist sympathies, the Almanac Singers now found themselves grouped with a dwindling cohort of pacifist idealists, disillusioned World War I veterans, and staunch conservative Republicans such as Congressman Hamilton Fish in opposing U.S. entry into World War II. The Pearl Harbor attack finally enabled—and necessitated—the group’s break from its isolationist stance.
Three months after Pearl Harbor, in one of the group’s more peculiar reversals, the Almanac Singers (now featuring Arthur Stern in place of Lee Hays) appeared in a February 1942 radio broadcast titled This Is War, carried simultaneously on all four networks. The performance met with approval, raising prospects of a national radio contract and a major-label recording agreement. Shortly thereafter, however, press accounts revived details of the group’s political history and its recent alignment with Soviet positions, causing those opportunities to evaporate.
Members dispersed into wartime service, and the Almanacs disbanded, although Seeger and Hays remained closely associated. They later founded the Weavers, endured extended blacklisting stemming from earlier leftist affiliations, and nevertheless shaped subsequent generations through the music of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and even the Beach Boys (“Sloop John B”), among numerous others. Lampell also faced blacklisting yet achieved success as a songwriter, screenwriter, and novelist. Despite being incapacitated by Huntington’s disease, which curtailed his professional activity after the mid-1950s, Guthrie ultimately exerted the widest influence, aided by his self-described disciple Bob Dylan.
Perhaps the culminating irony lay in the Almanacs’ popularization of the term “hootenanny,” denoting an informal assembly of folk performers and audiences—a word that grew sufficiently familiar to title the 1960s ABC television folk-music program. Yet owing to his prior political associations, Pete Seeger, co-founder of the Almanacs, was barred from appearing on Hootenanny.
Their origins trace to 1940, when Seeger, Hays, and Lampell converged. Seeger and Hays had already performed at assorted leftist political gatherings, and Lampell, sharing quarters with Hays, began absorbing their rehearsals in the apartment Seeger often occupied. The three began casually once Lampell merged with the pair. They played benefit events for assorted political causes, and their unadorned, unassuming style proved immediately engaging; the calculated “hillbilly” presentation disarmed listeners who remained unaware of the pointed material ahead. After an electrifying appearance at the American Youth Congress gathering in Washington, D.C., during February 1941, where they entertained delegates—largely pacifists and leftists—with songs critical of Roosevelt and the looming war, the Almanac Singers solidified into an active ensemble.
Beyond their skill at crafting original material, Seeger, Hays, and Lampell excelled at reshaping traditional numbers by grafting contemporary references onto them, addressing labor mistreatment and perceived governmental indifference toward workers. They would enter gatherings of construction crews or factory hands, initially met with suspicion at the sight of guitar- and banjo-toting “hillbillies,” yet by the close of each set hundreds of workers joined the choruses and stood ready to endorse the organizers’ proposals.
The very designation “the Almanac Singers” was chosen to project the most plainspoken image possible. Seeger noted that rural households typically possessed only two volumes, the Bible and the Farmer’s Almanac—the first meant to guide them toward the hereafter, the second to aid them through the present.
Guthrie joined in spring 1941, and Sis Cunningham together with Bess Hawes (sister of Alan Lomax) eventually participated as well, though the six never recorded in that configuration. Additional musicians who appeared informally with the trio or quartet at various times included blues performers Leadbelly and Josh White along with folk singers Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennett. Although the Communist Party, headquartered only blocks from the apartment shared by Seeger, Hays, and Lampell, viewed the Almanacs as overly independent—particularly given their urban communal living arrangement—and occasionally irreverent, the organization nevertheless enlisted the group to advance its objectives. The singers became familiar presences at union halls and fundraising events tied to numerous left-leaning political circles.
Their repertoire remained inseparable from their political commitments, rendering any account of the group inseparable from the convictions that simultaneously propelled and ultimately undermined it. Every member maintained ties to leftist organizations, among them the Communist Party. Some involvement reflected youthful inexperience more than deep allegiance to Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. Moreover, prior to Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Communist Party had appeared to many Americans as the sole political outlet addressing the concerns of impoverished and working-class citizens. In addition, numerous Americans, especially intellectuals, retained respect for the Party because it alone among European political forces mounted consistent opposition to Hitler and fascism.
One of the Almanacs’ central aims was to draw labor organizations and their members into broader coalitions. They maintained staunch opposition to Roosevelt, citing what they regarded as inadequate presidential backing for workers’ rights—overlooking widespread upper-class animosity toward the president for excessive sympathy toward labor—and his enactment of the nation’s first peacetime draft legislation.
During spring 1941, following months of unsuccessful efforts, the Almanac Singers secured their initial recording session, resulting in Songs for John Doe. The album followed the Communist Party’s official isolationist stance—shaped by the prior year’s non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin—and urged resistance to American entry into the European conflict. The release appeared only weeks before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, prompting the group to distance itself partially from the record’s content.
Alan Lomax, future filmmaker Nicholas Ray, and NBC executive Joe Thompson facilitated the session; they persuaded Eric Bernay, proprietor of a midtown Manhattan record shop and the small Keynote imprint, that the Almanacs warranted investment. Bernay possessed prior leftist political experience and maintained an open musical outlook—he had helped organize sponsorship for the Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall several years earlier, an event for which John Hammond had sought Robert Johnson, only to learn of the blues artist’s death and instead engage Big Bill Broonzy. Bernay nevertheless remained cautious regarding the political implications of their songs and therefore released Songs for John Doe on the subsidiary Almanac Records imprint to shield Keynote from potential fallout.
Strong initial sales prompted Bernay to commission a second album, Talking Union, devoted to labor songs and issued directly on Keynote. The Almanacs continued voicing anti-Roosevelt sentiments, and at least one such recording reached Eleanor Roosevelt, who deemed it in questionable taste and reportedly provoked the president’s irritation. Nevertheless, the ensemble’s musical impact could not be denied. Although they drew repertoire from country and Western traditions, they were not performing within those idioms. In effect, the Almanac Singers helped establish folk music as a viable commercial category by becoming the first collective to market this body of work deliberately to a broad audience.
On 7 July 1941 the group taped another batch of songs, less overtly political in tone, during a hastily arranged session overseen by Alan Lomax. The purpose was to raise $250 toward purchasing a vehicle for a westward journey. The core quartet was occasionally supplemented by part-time participants Pete Hawes (also known as Joe Bowers) and his brother Butch (husband of Bess Lomax). The resulting tracks later surfaced across two albums, first on 78 rpm discs, subsequently on LPs, and ultimately on a single CD under the titles Sod Buster Ballads (a designation the members disliked) and Sea Chanties. The ensemble departed for California after completing the eighteen sides and remained unaware of the albums’ existence until their return months afterward.
The Almanac Singers’ trajectory climbed and declined swiftly. They garnered considerable notice from successful appearances at rallies, particularly during the western excursion. Once in California, however, internal tensions surfaced as divergent objectives came into view: Lampell’s political drive never matched the intensity of Seeger’s, and the fact that Lampell and Guthrie employed the group and its music partly to meet women rendered Lampell an object of suspicion and resentment. Lampell and Guthrie departed, while Seeger and Hays persisted, augmented by substitute musicians.
Several months later they returned east, where Seeger and Hays began establishing what became known as Almanac Houses—communal living spaces where aspiring performers could gather to play, listen, and, when necessary, reside. Their politics, which remained awkwardly pacifist amid Europe’s deteriorating situation and shifting American attitudes, precluded any durable stability or commercial breakthrough. Despite their leftist sympathies, the Almanac Singers now found themselves grouped with a dwindling cohort of pacifist idealists, disillusioned World War I veterans, and staunch conservative Republicans such as Congressman Hamilton Fish in opposing U.S. entry into World War II. The Pearl Harbor attack finally enabled—and necessitated—the group’s break from its isolationist stance.
Three months after Pearl Harbor, in one of the group’s more peculiar reversals, the Almanac Singers (now featuring Arthur Stern in place of Lee Hays) appeared in a February 1942 radio broadcast titled This Is War, carried simultaneously on all four networks. The performance met with approval, raising prospects of a national radio contract and a major-label recording agreement. Shortly thereafter, however, press accounts revived details of the group’s political history and its recent alignment with Soviet positions, causing those opportunities to evaporate.
Members dispersed into wartime service, and the Almanacs disbanded, although Seeger and Hays remained closely associated. They later founded the Weavers, endured extended blacklisting stemming from earlier leftist affiliations, and nevertheless shaped subsequent generations through the music of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and even the Beach Boys (“Sloop John B”), among numerous others. Lampell also faced blacklisting yet achieved success as a songwriter, screenwriter, and novelist. Despite being incapacitated by Huntington’s disease, which curtailed his professional activity after the mid-1950s, Guthrie ultimately exerted the widest influence, aided by his self-described disciple Bob Dylan.
Perhaps the culminating irony lay in the Almanacs’ popularization of the term “hootenanny,” denoting an informal assembly of folk performers and audiences—a word that grew sufficiently familiar to title the 1960s ABC television folk-music program. Yet owing to his prior political associations, Pete Seeger, co-founder of the Almanacs, was barred from appearing on Hootenanny.
Albums
