A whole lot of people never knew who he was, even though he influenced a whole lot of what we’ve seen or heard for decades on end - including a lot of very popular musicians. Everybody heard Belafonte, or Guthrie, or Burle Ives and later The Byrds, Springsteen, etc. - but all of them have said that Seeger was really driving and they were just riding.
And, if you like what Seeger did with the HUAC thing, just imagine his take on the present NSA scandal! Netflix Instant has the documentary, ‘Trumbo’. It’s not about Seeger at all - but it is about the Hollywood 10 - the group of screenwriters who also spit in HUAC’s eye, and the prices they paid for that. It forms a pretty good picture, I think, of the times Seeger was living in then, and what he as an artist was seeing in those years. And, the film has all these really wonderful cuts of various well-known actors reading what Trumbo wrote, as it leads into the next set of events. (And that, alone, is worth the time taken.) Trumbo commented, often indirectly, but really beautifully on the whole HUAC saga and what it meant, and Seeger sang about it in the same way.
p.s. - Bryan Cranston Is set to do a biopic of Trumbo as his next project - can’t wait! What a perfect project, and a perfect time to do it!
