Biography
The Almanac Singers existed for little more than twelve months and preserved roughly three dozen selections, yet their recordings generated as much debate as enthusiasm. They ranked among the earliest folk ensembles assembled explicitly around political aims to reach wax, and the roster—Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Millard Lampell—amounted to a virtual catalogue of the leading voices in topical and mainstream folk circles over the following two decades. Within the group Seeger established his first formal partnership with Hays while simultaneously creating the initial professional bridge linking the paths of Seeger, Hays, and Guthrie; traces of that association remained audible more than half a century after the collective dissolved.
The ensemble originated in 1940 when Seeger, Hays, and Millard Lampell began meeting. Seeger and Hays had already performed jointly at numerous left-wing political events, and Lampell, who shared living quarters with Hays, overheard their rehearsals in the apartment Seeger often occupied. The three drifted into an easy collaboration once Lampell began participating. They appeared at fund-raising gatherings for assorted political organizations, where their plainspoken, unadorned delivery and calculated “hillbilly” presentation repeatedly caught listeners off guard. After a galvanizing appearance at the American Youth Congress gathering in Washington, D.C., during February 1941—where they delivered anti-Roosevelt and anti-war material to an audience of pacifists and leftists—the Almanac Singers became a functioning unit.
Seeger, Hays, and Lampell excelled not only at original composition but also at reshaping traditional material, inserting fresh verses that addressed contemporary concerns such as the exploitation of laborers and governmental indifference to their welfare. When they entered meetings of construction crews or factory workers, initial suspicion toward the guitar- and banjo-carrying “hillbillies” often gave way to enthusiastic participation, with hundreds of attendees joining choruses and endorsing the organizers’ subsequent appeals.
The choice of the name “the Almanac Singers” itself reflected a deliberate effort to project simplicity. Seeger observed that rural households typically possessed only two volumes—The Bible and The Farmer’s Almanac—one guiding readers toward the hereafter, the other assisting them through the present world.
Woody Guthrie joined in spring 1941; shortly afterward Sis Cunningham and Bess Hawes (sister of Alan Lomax) also participated, although the six never recorded together. Additional musicians who sat in informally included blues performers Leadbelly and Josh White as well as folk singers Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennett. Although the Communist Party, whose New York offices stood only blocks from the apartment shared by Seeger, Hays, and Lampell, viewed the Almanacs as excessively independent—particularly their urban communal living arrangement—and too inclined toward humor, the party nevertheless welcomed their assistance in advancing its objectives. The singers became regular participants at union gatherings and benefits for various left-wing causes.
Because the Almanac Singers’ music remained inseparable from their political commitments, any account of their trajectory must address those commitments, which both propelled and ultimately undermined the group. Every member maintained ties to leftist organizations, including the Communist Party. Some of these affiliations stemmed from youthful inexperience rather than deep doctrinal allegiance to Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. It is also worth recalling that, prior to Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Communist Party appeared to many Americans as the sole political entity speaking for the poor and the working class. Moreover, numerous citizens, especially intellectuals, continued to respect the party because it alone in Europe maintained consistent opposition to Hitler and fascism.
One of the group’s aims was to draw labor organizations and their members into progressive circles. They remained sharply critical of Roosevelt, faulting him for insufficient defense of workers’ rights—despite widespread upper-class hostility toward the president for being overly sympathetic to labor—and for signing the nation’s first peacetime draft legislation.
During spring 1941, after 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, adopted after the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact of the previous year, and urged resistance to American entry into the European conflict. The release appeared only weeks before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, prompting the singers to distance themselves partially from its message.
Alan Lomax, future filmmaker Nicholas Ray, and NBC executive Joe Thompson assisted with the session; they persuaded Keynote label owner Eric Bernay, proprietor of a midtown Manhattan record store, that the Almanacs merited attention. Bernay’s own left-wing background and musical openness—he had helped sponsor the Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, for which John Hammond had sought Robert Johnson only to learn of the bluesman’s death and had returned with Big Bill Broonzy instead—made him receptive, yet he remained cautious about the political content and therefore issued Songs for John Doe on the subsidiary imprint Almanac Records to shield Keynote from possible repercussions.
Strong initial sales encouraged Bernay to record a second collection, Talking Union, consisting of labor songs and released directly on Keynote. The Almanacs continued their pointed criticism of Roosevelt; at least one such disc reached Eleanor Roosevelt, who considered its tone questionable and reportedly provoked the president. Nevertheless, the ensemble’s musical impact was unmistakable. Although they drew repertoire from country and western sources, they were not performing in those styles. In effect, the Almanac Singers helped establish folk music as a marketable category by becoming the first ensemble to market this repertoire consciously to a broad public.
On July 7, 1941, the group recorded another set of less overtly political songs in a hastily arranged session produced by Alan Lomax, intended to raise $250 for a vehicle for a California journey. Occasional participants Pete Hawes (also known as Joe Bowers) and his brother Butch (husband of Bess Lomax) augmented the core quartet on several tracks. The resulting material later appeared on two albums—first issued on 78 rpm discs, subsequently as LPs, and eventually compiled on a single CD—under the titles Sod Buster Ballads (a name the members disliked) and Sea Chanties. The singers departed for California after completing the eighteen selections and remained unaware of the albums until their return months later.
The Almanac Singers’ fortunes climbed and declined with striking speed. Successful appearances at rallies, particularly during their western tour, generated considerable notice. Once in California, however, internal tensions surfaced as differing ambitions became evident: Lampell’s political drive never matched Seeger’s intensity, and both Lampell and Guthrie were perceived as using the group partly to attract romantic partners, breeding resentment and suspicion. Lampell and Guthrie departed; Seeger and Hays continued, recruiting substitutes as needed.
Returning to the East Coast several months later, Seeger and Hays established “Almanac Houses,” communal spaces where aspiring performers could rehearse, listen, or reside. Their stubbornly pacifist stance amid worsening European conditions, combined with rapid shifts in American public sentiment, prevented any sustained stability. Despite their leftist sympathies, the Almanacs 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 entry into World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor finally allowed—and required—the ensemble to abandon its isolationist position.
Three months after Pearl Harbor, in one of the group’s strangest reversals, the Almanac Singers (now featuring Arthur Stern in place of Lee Hays) appeared in a February 1942 radio special titled This Is War, broadcast simultaneously across all four networks. The performance drew favorable response and seemed to promise national radio exposure and a major-label contract. Stories soon surfaced in the press detailing the members’ earlier political record and their recent adherence to the Soviet line, however, and both the broadcast and recording opportunities vanished.
The demands of the war scattered the members, effectively dissolving the Almanacs, although Seeger and Hays remained closely associated. They subsequently formed the Weavers, endured prolonged blacklisting stemming from their earlier political affiliations, and nonetheless shaped a later generation indirectly through the music of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and even the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B,” among others. Lampell also faced blacklisting yet built a successful career as a songwriter, screenwriter, and novelist. Despite being incapacitated by Huntington’s disease, which curtailed his work after the mid-1950s, Guthrie ultimately exerted the widest influence, aided by his self-described disciple Bob Dylan.
One final irony lies in the fact that the Almanacs popularized the term “hootenanny” to describe informal gatherings of folk singers and listeners; the word later supplied the title for the 1960s ABC television folk-music program. Yet Pete Seeger, co-founder of the Almanacs, remained barred from appearing on Hootenanny because of his political past.
The ensemble originated in 1940 when Seeger, Hays, and Millard Lampell began meeting. Seeger and Hays had already performed jointly at numerous left-wing political events, and Lampell, who shared living quarters with Hays, overheard their rehearsals in the apartment Seeger often occupied. The three drifted into an easy collaboration once Lampell began participating. They appeared at fund-raising gatherings for assorted political organizations, where their plainspoken, unadorned delivery and calculated “hillbilly” presentation repeatedly caught listeners off guard. After a galvanizing appearance at the American Youth Congress gathering in Washington, D.C., during February 1941—where they delivered anti-Roosevelt and anti-war material to an audience of pacifists and leftists—the Almanac Singers became a functioning unit.
Seeger, Hays, and Lampell excelled not only at original composition but also at reshaping traditional material, inserting fresh verses that addressed contemporary concerns such as the exploitation of laborers and governmental indifference to their welfare. When they entered meetings of construction crews or factory workers, initial suspicion toward the guitar- and banjo-carrying “hillbillies” often gave way to enthusiastic participation, with hundreds of attendees joining choruses and endorsing the organizers’ subsequent appeals.
The choice of the name “the Almanac Singers” itself reflected a deliberate effort to project simplicity. Seeger observed that rural households typically possessed only two volumes—The Bible and The Farmer’s Almanac—one guiding readers toward the hereafter, the other assisting them through the present world.
Woody Guthrie joined in spring 1941; shortly afterward Sis Cunningham and Bess Hawes (sister of Alan Lomax) also participated, although the six never recorded together. Additional musicians who sat in informally included blues performers Leadbelly and Josh White as well as folk singers Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennett. Although the Communist Party, whose New York offices stood only blocks from the apartment shared by Seeger, Hays, and Lampell, viewed the Almanacs as excessively independent—particularly their urban communal living arrangement—and too inclined toward humor, the party nevertheless welcomed their assistance in advancing its objectives. The singers became regular participants at union gatherings and benefits for various left-wing causes.
Because the Almanac Singers’ music remained inseparable from their political commitments, any account of their trajectory must address those commitments, which both propelled and ultimately undermined the group. Every member maintained ties to leftist organizations, including the Communist Party. Some of these affiliations stemmed from youthful inexperience rather than deep doctrinal allegiance to Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. It is also worth recalling that, prior to Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Communist Party appeared to many Americans as the sole political entity speaking for the poor and the working class. Moreover, numerous citizens, especially intellectuals, continued to respect the party because it alone in Europe maintained consistent opposition to Hitler and fascism.
One of the group’s aims was to draw labor organizations and their members into progressive circles. They remained sharply critical of Roosevelt, faulting him for insufficient defense of workers’ rights—despite widespread upper-class hostility toward the president for being overly sympathetic to labor—and for signing the nation’s first peacetime draft legislation.
During spring 1941, after 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, adopted after the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact of the previous year, and urged resistance to American entry into the European conflict. The release appeared only weeks before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, prompting the singers to distance themselves partially from its message.
Alan Lomax, future filmmaker Nicholas Ray, and NBC executive Joe Thompson assisted with the session; they persuaded Keynote label owner Eric Bernay, proprietor of a midtown Manhattan record store, that the Almanacs merited attention. Bernay’s own left-wing background and musical openness—he had helped sponsor the Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, for which John Hammond had sought Robert Johnson only to learn of the bluesman’s death and had returned with Big Bill Broonzy instead—made him receptive, yet he remained cautious about the political content and therefore issued Songs for John Doe on the subsidiary imprint Almanac Records to shield Keynote from possible repercussions.
Strong initial sales encouraged Bernay to record a second collection, Talking Union, consisting of labor songs and released directly on Keynote. The Almanacs continued their pointed criticism of Roosevelt; at least one such disc reached Eleanor Roosevelt, who considered its tone questionable and reportedly provoked the president. Nevertheless, the ensemble’s musical impact was unmistakable. Although they drew repertoire from country and western sources, they were not performing in those styles. In effect, the Almanac Singers helped establish folk music as a marketable category by becoming the first ensemble to market this repertoire consciously to a broad public.
On July 7, 1941, the group recorded another set of less overtly political songs in a hastily arranged session produced by Alan Lomax, intended to raise $250 for a vehicle for a California journey. Occasional participants Pete Hawes (also known as Joe Bowers) and his brother Butch (husband of Bess Lomax) augmented the core quartet on several tracks. The resulting material later appeared on two albums—first issued on 78 rpm discs, subsequently as LPs, and eventually compiled on a single CD—under the titles Sod Buster Ballads (a name the members disliked) and Sea Chanties. The singers departed for California after completing the eighteen selections and remained unaware of the albums until their return months later.
The Almanac Singers’ fortunes climbed and declined with striking speed. Successful appearances at rallies, particularly during their western tour, generated considerable notice. Once in California, however, internal tensions surfaced as differing ambitions became evident: Lampell’s political drive never matched Seeger’s intensity, and both Lampell and Guthrie were perceived as using the group partly to attract romantic partners, breeding resentment and suspicion. Lampell and Guthrie departed; Seeger and Hays continued, recruiting substitutes as needed.
Returning to the East Coast several months later, Seeger and Hays established “Almanac Houses,” communal spaces where aspiring performers could rehearse, listen, or reside. Their stubbornly pacifist stance amid worsening European conditions, combined with rapid shifts in American public sentiment, prevented any sustained stability. Despite their leftist sympathies, the Almanacs 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 entry into World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor finally allowed—and required—the ensemble to abandon its isolationist position.
Three months after Pearl Harbor, in one of the group’s strangest reversals, the Almanac Singers (now featuring Arthur Stern in place of Lee Hays) appeared in a February 1942 radio special titled This Is War, broadcast simultaneously across all four networks. The performance drew favorable response and seemed to promise national radio exposure and a major-label contract. Stories soon surfaced in the press detailing the members’ earlier political record and their recent adherence to the Soviet line, however, and both the broadcast and recording opportunities vanished.
The demands of the war scattered the members, effectively dissolving the Almanacs, although Seeger and Hays remained closely associated. They subsequently formed the Weavers, endured prolonged blacklisting stemming from their earlier political affiliations, and nonetheless shaped a later generation indirectly through the music of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and even the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B,” among others. Lampell also faced blacklisting yet built a successful career as a songwriter, screenwriter, and novelist. Despite being incapacitated by Huntington’s disease, which curtailed his work after the mid-1950s, Guthrie ultimately exerted the widest influence, aided by his self-described disciple Bob Dylan.
One final irony lies in the fact that the Almanacs popularized the term “hootenanny” to describe informal gatherings of folk singers and listeners; the word later supplied the title for the 1960s ABC television folk-music program. Yet Pete Seeger, co-founder of the Almanacs, remained barred from appearing on Hootenanny because of his political past.
Albums
