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First Time Ever
Born in New York City in 1935, Peggy Seeger enjoyed a childhood steeped in music and politics. Her father was the noted musicologist Charles Seeger; her mother, the modernist composer Ruth Crawford; and her brother Pete, the celebrated writer of protest songs.
After studying at Radcliffe College, in 1955 Peggy left to travel the world. It was in England that she met the man, some two decades older and with a wife and family, with whom she would share the next thirty-three years: the actor, playwright and songwriter Ewan MacColl. Together, Peggy and Ewan helped lay the foundations of the British folk revival, through the formative - and controversial - Critics Group and the landmark BBC Radio Ballads series. And as Ewan's muse, Peggy inspired one of the twentieth century's greatest love songs, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Peggy's life comprises art and passion, family and separation, tragedy, celebration and the unexpected - and irresistible - force of love. It would by any standards be an extraordinary story, but what elevates her account is the beauty of the writing: it is clear-eyed and playful, luminous and melodic, fearless, funny and always truthful, from the first word to the last.
After studying at Radcliffe College, in 1955 Peggy left to travel the world. It was in England that she met the man, some two decades older and with a wife and family, with whom she would share the next thirty-three years: the actor, playwright and songwriter Ewan MacColl. Together, Peggy and Ewan helped lay the foundations of the British folk revival, through the formative - and controversial - Critics Group and the landmark BBC Radio Ballads series. And as Ewan's muse, Peggy inspired one of the twentieth century's greatest love songs, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Peggy's life comprises art and passion, family and separation, tragedy, celebration and the unexpected - and irresistible - force of love. It would by any standards be an extraordinary story, but what elevates her account is the beauty of the writing: it is clear-eyed and playful, luminous and melodic, fearless, funny and always truthful, from the first word to the last.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 2017
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September 27, 2018
This August I was at the Cambridge Folk Festival when Peggy Seeger was introduced - with great enthusiasm - as the next act on the Main Stage. Her name sounded only vaguely familiar, but the introduction made it clear that she was a legendary figure in folk music. The music began as an exuberant fast-tempo of guitar and banjo, but then a rather warbling voice began to sing. I like folk music, but I’m not really an aficionado of its more ‘old style’ stylings. Well, there was that excuse, and the fact that it was really hot and I desperately wanted shade and a cold drink. To my everlasting regret, I wandered off and missed the majority of Seeger’s performance. Some young musician friends of mine stayed for it, and they were mightily impressed. They thought that Peggy Seeger was really cool.
Two weeks later, and a musician friend of mine caught her set at the Green Man Festival in Wales. He thought that I might enjoy this memoir, so he brought back an inscribed copy of it for me - along with the CD that showcases many of the songs (from a long, long career) which Seeger gives particular mention in her life story. Because it was a gift, I read it straight away . . . and for a few weeks now I have been in the grip of a full-blown Peggy Seeger obsession.
Reading Seeger’s memoir is a wonderful shadowing of the 20th century, both in the US and England. As a touring performer from her teenage years, Seeger travelled all over the world - including Russian and China during the height of the Communist era. As a student of folk music traditions, she was always looking backward and trying to capture an oral tradition before it was completely lost. As a singer of protest songs, she was deeply involved with many of the political and protest movements of the 20th century - and thus always involved in the ‘present moment’ of the times. Age has certainly not withered her; there is a song called “Donald’s In The White House” on the “First Time Ever” album. My favourite line has to be: “It’s clear he’s going to screw the people, screw the climate, screw the earth and then, make the world a safer place for Yankee businessmen.”
I was particularly interested in her development as a feminist - and as a woman separate from her roles as daughter, wife and mother. Throughout the book, she tends to joke that certain events happened “before she became a feminist”. At the age of 21 she met her future husband and musical collobator of 30 years: Ewan McColl. He was twice her age and already married. They went on to have three children together and a very prolific musical partnership. However, the relationship (later marriage) was not without pain and sacrifice. She describes, in mostly humorous language, her relationship with her extremely difficult Scottish mother-in-law; she also confides, in sometimes shocking detail, painful experiences with abortions and McColl’s ongoing relationship with his wife. After 10 exhausting years of nursing McColl through heart trouble and periods of bad health, Seeger fell in love with her friend and fellow musician Irene Pyper-Scott. Their relationship (later marriage) is just as interesting as her long relationship with McColl, although it doesn’t get quite as much airing in the book. After 30 years in England, Seeger felt compelled to “go home” to the United States and ended up, for many years, in Asheville, North Carolina and then Boston before returning to England. As I have also lived much of my adult life in England, I was really interested by her experiences in trying to go home again.
If ever someone was born to be a musician, it was Peggy Seeger. She was born on June 17, 1935 into a house filled with music. Both of her parents were distinguished musicians, and they were both heavily involved with a project to archive American folk songs for the Library of Congress. Her mother was a concert pianist and composer; the first female composer to win a Guggenheim fellowship. Her father was influential in establishing musicology as an academic discipline. After reading this memoir, I spent some time reading about Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger - and also Peggy’s famous half-brother, Pete Seeger - and I felt like I learned so much about an important and interesting aspect of 20th century American culture. Some of my favourite chapters were about Seeger’s childhood memories of Washington DC and its suburbs during the 1940s and 1950s. Her mother worked full-time, mostly giving piano lessons, so much of the household work was done by a succession of African-American women. Seeger’s political education seemed to begin at home, in more than one sense.
Ruth Crawford Seeger died of cancer when Peggy (the second oldest of four children) was at Radcliffe College. No doubt her life would have played out very differently if that sense of family stability hadn’t ended so abruptly. I was very moved by this observation: ”We are comrades-in-arms, Dio and I. We have so much in common: both united for decades to a man very many years our senior, always impatient to get to our work, endlessly trying to get across to our children as a person and being rejected not by direct lack of interest, but by any child’s unwavering belief that no life existed before its own birth.”
Seeger’s writing voice is highly idiosyncratic and she tends to write short, almost staccato, sentences. There’s definitely a “stream-of-consciousness” feeling to the narrative at times. She says herself that her book is written very much in the present: ”it’s how I feel now about back then.” She doesn’t bother with strict chronology, although the memoir does follow a mostly chronological timeline. Her writing is filled with humour and personality; and yes, she does tend to get both ‘ranty’ and preachy, especially in the latter half of the novel. I’m sure she is exactly the same in person! After all, her engagement with politics has been one of the dominant themes of her life. I didn’t mind it all; although admittedly, her politics do tend to harmonise (mostly) with mine. In Seeger’s own words: “My book roams freely around time, emotions, opinions, prejudices and a lot of whatever.”
All in all, what a fascinating life - and how generously she shares some of its public highlights and deeply personal moments with her readers.
Two weeks later, and a musician friend of mine caught her set at the Green Man Festival in Wales. He thought that I might enjoy this memoir, so he brought back an inscribed copy of it for me - along with the CD that showcases many of the songs (from a long, long career) which Seeger gives particular mention in her life story. Because it was a gift, I read it straight away . . . and for a few weeks now I have been in the grip of a full-blown Peggy Seeger obsession.
Reading Seeger’s memoir is a wonderful shadowing of the 20th century, both in the US and England. As a touring performer from her teenage years, Seeger travelled all over the world - including Russian and China during the height of the Communist era. As a student of folk music traditions, she was always looking backward and trying to capture an oral tradition before it was completely lost. As a singer of protest songs, she was deeply involved with many of the political and protest movements of the 20th century - and thus always involved in the ‘present moment’ of the times. Age has certainly not withered her; there is a song called “Donald’s In The White House” on the “First Time Ever” album. My favourite line has to be: “It’s clear he’s going to screw the people, screw the climate, screw the earth and then, make the world a safer place for Yankee businessmen.”
I was particularly interested in her development as a feminist - and as a woman separate from her roles as daughter, wife and mother. Throughout the book, she tends to joke that certain events happened “before she became a feminist”. At the age of 21 she met her future husband and musical collobator of 30 years: Ewan McColl. He was twice her age and already married. They went on to have three children together and a very prolific musical partnership. However, the relationship (later marriage) was not without pain and sacrifice. She describes, in mostly humorous language, her relationship with her extremely difficult Scottish mother-in-law; she also confides, in sometimes shocking detail, painful experiences with abortions and McColl’s ongoing relationship with his wife. After 10 exhausting years of nursing McColl through heart trouble and periods of bad health, Seeger fell in love with her friend and fellow musician Irene Pyper-Scott. Their relationship (later marriage) is just as interesting as her long relationship with McColl, although it doesn’t get quite as much airing in the book. After 30 years in England, Seeger felt compelled to “go home” to the United States and ended up, for many years, in Asheville, North Carolina and then Boston before returning to England. As I have also lived much of my adult life in England, I was really interested by her experiences in trying to go home again.
If ever someone was born to be a musician, it was Peggy Seeger. She was born on June 17, 1935 into a house filled with music. Both of her parents were distinguished musicians, and they were both heavily involved with a project to archive American folk songs for the Library of Congress. Her mother was a concert pianist and composer; the first female composer to win a Guggenheim fellowship. Her father was influential in establishing musicology as an academic discipline. After reading this memoir, I spent some time reading about Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger - and also Peggy’s famous half-brother, Pete Seeger - and I felt like I learned so much about an important and interesting aspect of 20th century American culture. Some of my favourite chapters were about Seeger’s childhood memories of Washington DC and its suburbs during the 1940s and 1950s. Her mother worked full-time, mostly giving piano lessons, so much of the household work was done by a succession of African-American women. Seeger’s political education seemed to begin at home, in more than one sense.
Ruth Crawford Seeger died of cancer when Peggy (the second oldest of four children) was at Radcliffe College. No doubt her life would have played out very differently if that sense of family stability hadn’t ended so abruptly. I was very moved by this observation: ”We are comrades-in-arms, Dio and I. We have so much in common: both united for decades to a man very many years our senior, always impatient to get to our work, endlessly trying to get across to our children as a person and being rejected not by direct lack of interest, but by any child’s unwavering belief that no life existed before its own birth.”
Seeger’s writing voice is highly idiosyncratic and she tends to write short, almost staccato, sentences. There’s definitely a “stream-of-consciousness” feeling to the narrative at times. She says herself that her book is written very much in the present: ”it’s how I feel now about back then.” She doesn’t bother with strict chronology, although the memoir does follow a mostly chronological timeline. Her writing is filled with humour and personality; and yes, she does tend to get both ‘ranty’ and preachy, especially in the latter half of the novel. I’m sure she is exactly the same in person! After all, her engagement with politics has been one of the dominant themes of her life. I didn’t mind it all; although admittedly, her politics do tend to harmonise (mostly) with mine. In Seeger’s own words: “My book roams freely around time, emotions, opinions, prejudices and a lot of whatever.”
All in all, what a fascinating life - and how generously she shares some of its public highlights and deeply personal moments with her readers.
December 14, 2020
(4.5) I’ve gotten really into folk music over the last 15 years, mostly thanks to my husband, but I’m a lot more familiar with the current UK scene than I am with the famous names of the 1960s and earlier. While I vaguely knew the Seeger name and had heard Peggy sing on a couple tracks of a Christmas folk song compilation a friend gave us a few years ago (The Sounding Joy by Elizabeth Mitchell, featuring traditional Christmas songs from Peggy’s mother Ruth Crawford Seeger’s songbook), it felt like I didn’t really ‘discover’ her until earlier this year, when she performed at two of the Folk on Foot online festivals that showed on UK bank holidays. I was so impressed with the 84-year-old’s spunk. She played a mixture of originals and traditional songs, including some counting songs fun for doing with children. I declared her my new hero and the grandmother you can only wish you had.
Still, I could never have predicted how much her memoir would resonate with me. And not just because we both grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and have settled in the same general part of England – though that would have been reason enough for me to want to read her life story. She has packed in enough adventure and experience for more than one life, and in some respects she has almost literally lived two lives: one in America (her first 20 years, plus another 20 years in her fifties to seventies) and one in England; one with Ewan MacColl and one with a female partner. Here’s how she puts it late in the book: “Gemini from head to toe, my heart has two homes. I have two families in two countries. I have had two life partners. I want to be both home and away, both bound and free.”
Her father, Charles Seeger, was a left-wing musicologist, and her mother a modernist composer. Together they worked on the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Music. Peggy first played an instrument at age six. With her American folk pedigree and banjo skills, she was in demand when, after attending Radcliffe and nursing her mother through her final days with cancer, she studied in Holland and travelled to the rest of Europe as part of a musical troupe. She was called to London to audition for a television opportunity and met MacColl, who invited her to see him sing in a play. He was more than 20 years her senior and on his second marriage, but there was electricity from the start and she stayed by him until his death 33 years later – despite starting out the relationship as the desperate ‘other woman’ and, about nine months before he died of heart problems, falling in love with her long-time friend Irene Pyper Scott.
Reading this, you have the feeling that nobody ever told Peggy Seeger how to write (or not write) a memoir, and it’s all the better for that. Although she sticks to a roughly chronological narrative, she pauses whenever she likes to pursue a theme – the gigs and audiences from hell, the women she hired to help her look after her three children, illnesses and accidents she’s survived, tributes to a few of the main musicians and BBC producers they worked with – and her writing is punchy and impressionistic, with scenes dashed off as she remembers them and any boring connective bits left out. She bounces between present and past tense, varies her sentence structure, frequently uses imperative mood and second person address, and peppers in lists and flashbacks (or flash-forwards). Jokes, trivia and knowing asides all over the place. Rarely do you get more than a few pages in a row of ‘this happened, then that happened’. (If you’re interested in the blow-by-blow, you can read Jean Freedman’s biography of Seeger, on which she admits relying for confirmation of details of her own life!)
This really is the highlights reel. “A memoir becomes a succession of anecdotes becomes a gallery of Radio Ballad snapshots,” she writes. It’s astonishing everything she’s done in her life. Being part of the UK’s folk revival with MacColl through their radio ballads, recordings and performances (and becoming politically suspect through trips to China and Cuba) is the main event, but she’s also been a professor of songwriting in Boston and toured as a solo artist. One incident that particularly stuck out to me was riding 900 miles across the USA, solo on a scooter with her banjo and guitar strapped on, to take up a regular gig in Chicago.
Along with singing traditional songs, telling the stories anew each time, she has continued to write protest songs about outrages committed against the poor and marginalized. She was late to take up the cause of women’s rights (‘I wasn’t a feminist back then’ is a common refrain), but it and environmentalism are now her twin passions. One song I saw her play at Folk on Foot was about the invisibility of older women in society, and I admired the frankness with which she recounts her four abortions (she and MacColl were really bad about birth control; “Sharing experience demystifies the process and strengthens female bonds”) and the surprise of falling in love with a woman in her fifties.
The eight and a half decades of Seeger’s life have been full of so many changes in terms of politics, culture, society, the place of women … even recording techniques. In one footnote she remarks that “recording apparatus has progressed from weighing too much to carry to being hard to find if you misplace it” – all the way from record-cutting machines to MP3s. While I would recommend this to anyone with even a mild interest in folk music for her words of wisdom on the folk tradition, I think I actually appreciated it more as a cultural document of a woman’s life, distinguished for its no-nonsense attitude. Now to go experience more of her music…
Some favorite lines:
(on folk music)
“The folk tales, songs and dances are the oldest music we have. If they have meaning, it is to keep us connected to one another, to the past from which we come – all of us, each culture in its own way with the one purpose: to perpetuate togetherness – survival.”
“What kind of new songs can a singer of folk material make to deal with the issues of these treacherous days? … We need to explore, steal, invent new formats. We need to capture the public imagination, sing to the fence-sitters, bring factions together. Righteous outrage and complaint are common features of folk-oriented protest songs. Let’s stop complaining and write – with as few complacent clichés as possible – about hope, compassion, gratitude, cohesion and, above all, action. Sounds simple. It is.”
“We create and pass on our art without a dollar sign or patron in sight. We help to slow down the pace of change. We are handing down the family jewels in as good a condition as possible. We bring the past forward … We spread the songs like a benign contagion. … In hard times, we will be able to pick up and go, making up new songs, singing them into the ear of a comrade and fading into the crowd. Folk singers and musicians are the young ones sitting at the bedside of old, old, very old Memory.”
(miscellaneous)
“I’m a gypsy at heart – I love leaving and I love arriving back. That moment of heading away for the land of Somewhere Else is unequalled even if I’ve been there before.”
“My inner child is still full of wonder and smart enough to avoid mirrors”
Still, I could never have predicted how much her memoir would resonate with me. And not just because we both grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and have settled in the same general part of England – though that would have been reason enough for me to want to read her life story. She has packed in enough adventure and experience for more than one life, and in some respects she has almost literally lived two lives: one in America (her first 20 years, plus another 20 years in her fifties to seventies) and one in England; one with Ewan MacColl and one with a female partner. Here’s how she puts it late in the book: “Gemini from head to toe, my heart has two homes. I have two families in two countries. I have had two life partners. I want to be both home and away, both bound and free.”
Her father, Charles Seeger, was a left-wing musicologist, and her mother a modernist composer. Together they worked on the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Music. Peggy first played an instrument at age six. With her American folk pedigree and banjo skills, she was in demand when, after attending Radcliffe and nursing her mother through her final days with cancer, she studied in Holland and travelled to the rest of Europe as part of a musical troupe. She was called to London to audition for a television opportunity and met MacColl, who invited her to see him sing in a play. He was more than 20 years her senior and on his second marriage, but there was electricity from the start and she stayed by him until his death 33 years later – despite starting out the relationship as the desperate ‘other woman’ and, about nine months before he died of heart problems, falling in love with her long-time friend Irene Pyper Scott.
Reading this, you have the feeling that nobody ever told Peggy Seeger how to write (or not write) a memoir, and it’s all the better for that. Although she sticks to a roughly chronological narrative, she pauses whenever she likes to pursue a theme – the gigs and audiences from hell, the women she hired to help her look after her three children, illnesses and accidents she’s survived, tributes to a few of the main musicians and BBC producers they worked with – and her writing is punchy and impressionistic, with scenes dashed off as she remembers them and any boring connective bits left out. She bounces between present and past tense, varies her sentence structure, frequently uses imperative mood and second person address, and peppers in lists and flashbacks (or flash-forwards). Jokes, trivia and knowing asides all over the place. Rarely do you get more than a few pages in a row of ‘this happened, then that happened’. (If you’re interested in the blow-by-blow, you can read Jean Freedman’s biography of Seeger, on which she admits relying for confirmation of details of her own life!)
This really is the highlights reel. “A memoir becomes a succession of anecdotes becomes a gallery of Radio Ballad snapshots,” she writes. It’s astonishing everything she’s done in her life. Being part of the UK’s folk revival with MacColl through their radio ballads, recordings and performances (and becoming politically suspect through trips to China and Cuba) is the main event, but she’s also been a professor of songwriting in Boston and toured as a solo artist. One incident that particularly stuck out to me was riding 900 miles across the USA, solo on a scooter with her banjo and guitar strapped on, to take up a regular gig in Chicago.
Along with singing traditional songs, telling the stories anew each time, she has continued to write protest songs about outrages committed against the poor and marginalized. She was late to take up the cause of women’s rights (‘I wasn’t a feminist back then’ is a common refrain), but it and environmentalism are now her twin passions. One song I saw her play at Folk on Foot was about the invisibility of older women in society, and I admired the frankness with which she recounts her four abortions (she and MacColl were really bad about birth control; “Sharing experience demystifies the process and strengthens female bonds”) and the surprise of falling in love with a woman in her fifties.
The eight and a half decades of Seeger’s life have been full of so many changes in terms of politics, culture, society, the place of women … even recording techniques. In one footnote she remarks that “recording apparatus has progressed from weighing too much to carry to being hard to find if you misplace it” – all the way from record-cutting machines to MP3s. While I would recommend this to anyone with even a mild interest in folk music for her words of wisdom on the folk tradition, I think I actually appreciated it more as a cultural document of a woman’s life, distinguished for its no-nonsense attitude. Now to go experience more of her music…
Some favorite lines:
(on folk music)
“The folk tales, songs and dances are the oldest music we have. If they have meaning, it is to keep us connected to one another, to the past from which we come – all of us, each culture in its own way with the one purpose: to perpetuate togetherness – survival.”
“What kind of new songs can a singer of folk material make to deal with the issues of these treacherous days? … We need to explore, steal, invent new formats. We need to capture the public imagination, sing to the fence-sitters, bring factions together. Righteous outrage and complaint are common features of folk-oriented protest songs. Let’s stop complaining and write – with as few complacent clichés as possible – about hope, compassion, gratitude, cohesion and, above all, action. Sounds simple. It is.”
“We create and pass on our art without a dollar sign or patron in sight. We help to slow down the pace of change. We are handing down the family jewels in as good a condition as possible. We bring the past forward … We spread the songs like a benign contagion. … In hard times, we will be able to pick up and go, making up new songs, singing them into the ear of a comrade and fading into the crowd. Folk singers and musicians are the young ones sitting at the bedside of old, old, very old Memory.”
(miscellaneous)
“I’m a gypsy at heart – I love leaving and I love arriving back. That moment of heading away for the land of Somewhere Else is unequalled even if I’ve been there before.”
“My inner child is still full of wonder and smart enough to avoid mirrors”
October 15, 2017
Wonderfully written. I am not a particular keen folk music fan, but seldom have I a read an autobiography that drew me so quickly in and held me firm, page after page. I could not resist reading paragraphs aloud to friends. Highly recommended.
January 19, 2018
Peggy Seeger was born into and lived a life of privilege. So why was she so snarky about folk music, which she basically appropriated and profited from all of her life? It was not her music; her music was that of her upper class academic parents who also produced bothers Pete and Mike. Both brothers used the music in different ways than Peggy. Peggy, prep schooled and Ivy Leagued, the snob who found beauty everywhere but in her native land and peoples, found plenty to criticize --be it Maud Karpeles, the helper of Cecil Sharpe, to the English Folk Song Society and its dances. (Only Peggy’s dances were authentic.) You would think she was the first person to play the banjo, although siblings Pete and Mike were far better musicians. She loves to authenticate and to hang with authenticators be they Ralph Rinzler or Alan Lomax.
She reveals. She had several abortions and describes them in great detail. (She also describes her bowel problems in minutely.) Her partner –or one of her partners—Ewan McColl, for whom she supposedly wrote the song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” she reveals as impotent. She also laments that it took McColl ten years to die. She has opinions on China, women’s pubic hair, miners, travelers versus Gypsies. Peggy is like the old guy at the end of the bar.
She talks endlessly about being on the road and the numerous gigs. And she is forever using the phrase, “That was before I was feminist.” Ms. Seeger preached to the choir, especially in her smug “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer.” In fact smugness and pomposity rule this work. She tells us she is no lesbian although she takes after McColl a lesbian lover, who in turn moves half way around the world. Her favorite phrase is “back then.”
If you read between the lines, you can get a fair picture of the brief folk music scene in Britain that lasted a few years. The Coen brothers did a better and more honest job with the US version in “Inside Llewellyn Davis.” And she does have the occasional good word for other performers such as Alf Edwards. Only occasionally, I must add. It’s Peggy, Peggy, Peggy all of the time. Mostly this is a galactic ego trip by a minor performer with a great deal of rage. Ms. Seeger never reveals the source of the rage.
She reveals. She had several abortions and describes them in great detail. (She also describes her bowel problems in minutely.) Her partner –or one of her partners—Ewan McColl, for whom she supposedly wrote the song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” she reveals as impotent. She also laments that it took McColl ten years to die. She has opinions on China, women’s pubic hair, miners, travelers versus Gypsies. Peggy is like the old guy at the end of the bar.
She talks endlessly about being on the road and the numerous gigs. And she is forever using the phrase, “That was before I was feminist.” Ms. Seeger preached to the choir, especially in her smug “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer.” In fact smugness and pomposity rule this work. She tells us she is no lesbian although she takes after McColl a lesbian lover, who in turn moves half way around the world. Her favorite phrase is “back then.”
If you read between the lines, you can get a fair picture of the brief folk music scene in Britain that lasted a few years. The Coen brothers did a better and more honest job with the US version in “Inside Llewellyn Davis.” And she does have the occasional good word for other performers such as Alf Edwards. Only occasionally, I must add. It’s Peggy, Peggy, Peggy all of the time. Mostly this is a galactic ego trip by a minor performer with a great deal of rage. Ms. Seeger never reveals the source of the rage.
November 6, 2017
I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.
I doubt very much I would like Peggy Seeger if I met her in person, but this is an interesting, well-written, very honest memoir.
She was raised in an unconventional household. Pete Seeger was her half-brother by her father's first marriage. At 20, after spending 3 years at Radcliffe, she dropped out and went to Europe.
There she fell in love with Ewan MacColl, a married (for the second time) man with a young son, who was 20 years her senior. She battled his wife Jean for his love and affection, especially at the beginning of their relationship. Becoming pregnant with MacColl's child, Seeger entered into a sham marriage with a mutual friend so she could move to the UK with MacColl. Jean gave birth to her second child with MacColl shortly after the birth of Ewan and Peggy's oldest child. She also renounced her American citizenship.
She and MacColl were important figures in the British folk music scene.
This is an interesting account of her life and times.
I doubt very much I would like Peggy Seeger if I met her in person, but this is an interesting, well-written, very honest memoir.
She was raised in an unconventional household. Pete Seeger was her half-brother by her father's first marriage. At 20, after spending 3 years at Radcliffe, she dropped out and went to Europe.
There she fell in love with Ewan MacColl, a married (for the second time) man with a young son, who was 20 years her senior. She battled his wife Jean for his love and affection, especially at the beginning of their relationship. Becoming pregnant with MacColl's child, Seeger entered into a sham marriage with a mutual friend so she could move to the UK with MacColl. Jean gave birth to her second child with MacColl shortly after the birth of Ewan and Peggy's oldest child. She also renounced her American citizenship.
She and MacColl were important figures in the British folk music scene.
This is an interesting account of her life and times.
November 3, 2022
I like to read books about folk artists as it feels like a tiny research project in which every pages is a discovery of a new song or lyric or curiosity about a musician. I cannot read this type of book without my phone by my side to listen to all the songs mentioned or to look up places and people. It’s what I would categorize as a ‘dwelling book’, as it feels like moving into someone else’s life and starting to think and see life through their own eyes. Peggy wrote pretty and cleverly, yet to my opinion sometimes in too much detail about scenarios that the reader is not familiar with. Regardless of that, it satisfied my curiosity.
October 4, 2021
Intelligence and clarity shine through every paragraph of this illuminating memoir of one of the titan figures of the British folk revival movement, who despite famous partners and family members has struggled at times to shine in her own right; not always sympathetic to read, Peggy Seeger's honesty and genuine passion, deep knowledge and pragmatism for her art nevertheless makes this deeply poignant book idiosyncratic.
August 15, 2022
Although I have an interest in Peggy Seeger as a significant folk artist, this memoir is definitely a cut above most that I have read. It is literary, engaging and brutally honest.
November 11, 2017
First Time Ever is Peggy Seeger's autobiography and is, I think, a wonderful example of what an autobiography can be. A fascinating life, with many professional and personal ups and downs.
One aspect of a good autobiography (or biography for that matter) is that the life examined has been full of peaks and valleys, even more interesting when many of the names are recognizable. Seeger's life absolutely qualifies in this respect and she provides many wonderful stories in the process of telling her larger overarching story. Some passages were simply stunning in both the writing and the reflective insight.
What I think sets this autobiography above so many others is Seeger's willingness to expose her own blemishes as well as her positives. Many readers may decide they don't care for aspects of her personality or some decisions and actions she made during her life. The fact Seeger herself is the one who presented the insight to allow such a view of her is, I believe, a positive about the book itself, aside from what one may think of her personally.
I would highly recommend this not only to folk music fans and music historians but also to readers who enjoy autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs. The work goes beyond just being a chronological retelling of her life into the realm of reflection. Like all of us I think Seeger is less than 100% critical of herself when reflecting but, the part with which I am impressed, she is honest and frank enough to allow readers to make their own conclusions about her life and her actions. Far too many autobiographies gloss over things that would elicit any negative response, Seeger did not do that to her readers.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
One aspect of a good autobiography (or biography for that matter) is that the life examined has been full of peaks and valleys, even more interesting when many of the names are recognizable. Seeger's life absolutely qualifies in this respect and she provides many wonderful stories in the process of telling her larger overarching story. Some passages were simply stunning in both the writing and the reflective insight.
What I think sets this autobiography above so many others is Seeger's willingness to expose her own blemishes as well as her positives. Many readers may decide they don't care for aspects of her personality or some decisions and actions she made during her life. The fact Seeger herself is the one who presented the insight to allow such a view of her is, I believe, a positive about the book itself, aside from what one may think of her personally.
I would highly recommend this not only to folk music fans and music historians but also to readers who enjoy autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs. The work goes beyond just being a chronological retelling of her life into the realm of reflection. Like all of us I think Seeger is less than 100% critical of herself when reflecting but, the part with which I am impressed, she is honest and frank enough to allow readers to make their own conclusions about her life and her actions. Far too many autobiographies gloss over things that would elicit any negative response, Seeger did not do that to her readers.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
November 11, 2017
At first I enjoyed this book. But afterwards as I read I found that Peggy Seeger life was self centered and selfish. The high point was she was the muse for the song The First Time I Ever sung by Roberta Flack. Her lover wrote it Ewan MacColl. She wrote and loved folk songs as she played the banjo. Her mother was very talented too but died of cancer at a young age. To me her mom called Dios was more talented but at her time could not express it properly. She would have been a fine musician as she interpreted songs with a firmer hand to me. I think Peggy was allowed to do as she wanted without any raising by any adults but a child minder. Yes Peggy was smart but greedy for herself and no consideration for anyone- even her children to me. It was cold. But that was the life she wanted. This is just my opinion. She did show some remorse at end but I feel that is because everyone has left her or now keep her at a arm's length. She is waiting to die.
January 6, 2019
I have been an admirer of Peggy Seeger since the 1960s. We were fortunate enough to sit at the feet of Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker – literally, for there were rarely enough chairs at our gatherings and they became our teachers and inspiration. I was touched by the fact that Ewan always remembered that I was a keen walker in Derbyshire, only discovering later his part in opening up the hills through the mass trespass. This fascinating and honest memoir opens up a much more complex family and musical history than we somewhat naive young admirers could have realised at the time. The honesty of this memoir is stunning and, just as we followed Ewan and Peggy into some kid of maturity back then, I am now left haunted by her account of ageing, raw but not without humour and resilience.
November 25, 2017
Peggy Seeger comes across as astoundingly inconsequential, or as she would say, 'Go on, why not.' - unprotected sex, risky scooter driving, travelling and hoping to find somewhere to sleep, and especially, in the early days quite easily led. She comes across later as fairly opinionated, slightly inclined to name-dropping, scarily ready to move on and leave those she loves behind. She comes across as very hard-working and thoughtful, politically sound, trying to do he best and to understand others. Overall she comes across, clearly and personally, in a fascinating memoir.
March 11, 2022
I really enjoyed this book. Peggy tells the story of her life, not so much as dates and events, but as stories. Peggy grew up in Chevy Chase, MD surrounded by music and ideas. As a young woman, she moved to England where she met her future husband, Ewan MacColl. She lived a full life traveling the world, meeting people and making music.
I related to Peggy to a certain extent in that I was born and raised in America (Carlisle, PA, about 2 1/2 hours from Washington, DC where my Aunt still lives). I am roughly Kitty's age so a different generation, but there was familiarity in her story. And then at 22, I moved to England where I met my husband. I am still in England (first Durham, then Nuneaton), with two children. Again, different generations but similar ways of seeing things.
I first heard about this book when she and her son Calum were on TV with Jools Holland. I am glad I took the time to read. I love music and I love hearing stories about people from different places, different backgrounds. Peggy and Ewan traveled to communist Russia, China and Cuba. Regardless of my politics (not a communist) I still long to hear what it was like in these places. Peggy traveled around post war Europe, another view into lives now past, or nearly so.
And as Peggy reaches the end of her life (still going as I write this), she brings beauty and poignancy to her stories. Being old does not make someone irrelevant. I hope that when I am old, I have the grace and poetry that Peggy still possesses. Thanks for the stories.
I related to Peggy to a certain extent in that I was born and raised in America (Carlisle, PA, about 2 1/2 hours from Washington, DC where my Aunt still lives). I am roughly Kitty's age so a different generation, but there was familiarity in her story. And then at 22, I moved to England where I met my husband. I am still in England (first Durham, then Nuneaton), with two children. Again, different generations but similar ways of seeing things.
I first heard about this book when she and her son Calum were on TV with Jools Holland. I am glad I took the time to read. I love music and I love hearing stories about people from different places, different backgrounds. Peggy and Ewan traveled to communist Russia, China and Cuba. Regardless of my politics (not a communist) I still long to hear what it was like in these places. Peggy traveled around post war Europe, another view into lives now past, or nearly so.
And as Peggy reaches the end of her life (still going as I write this), she brings beauty and poignancy to her stories. Being old does not make someone irrelevant. I hope that when I am old, I have the grace and poetry that Peggy still possesses. Thanks for the stories.
May 27, 2018
How it felt to have had Peggy Seeger's experiences in life, love, music, in myriad homes in the US and UK, from vivacious youth to gray age, told with candor, pride, humility, and a seasoned storyteller's skill. Seeger biographies dot American music dictionaries like Bach family ones do in Germany. Peggy's father Charles helped found the field of ethnomusicology, mother Ruth wrote a string quartet in 1931 that remains in the chamber music repertoire, half-brother Pete led millions of people in song at his concerts all over the world, brother Mike was a folk singer and multi-instrumentalist, cousin Tony ran Smithsonian Folkways Recordings . . . and Peggy essentially ran away from home to settle in the UK with Scottish balladeer and songwriter Ewan MacColl where they were central figures in the English 'folk revival'. As Seeger admits, Jean Freedman's book "Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love and Politics" is a true biography. "First Time Ever" is a memoir -- and Seeger is so good at sharing her memories (they jump around as much as she moved around) that her presence jumps off page after page.
March 23, 2018
An interesting book by an interesting woman. The younger half-sister of Pete Seeger she talks about her anger at (sometimes) being billed when performing as "the sister of Pete Seeger" rather than as her own person.) She was also the wife of Ewan MacColl, a well-known Scottish folk singer. Seeger was raised in an unconventional though financially comfortable family in the US but ended up spending much of her adult life in the UK where she and MacColl were well known in the folk music scene; she was both a writer and a singer. Much of her life is described as being accidental - she found herself here, there, not where she should have been, pregnant, having an illegal abortion, pregnant again. As she says "not a feminist" for the longest time, which she clearly regrets. A lot of detail about her music and the music scene which was not of great interest to me but would certainly be to others. She cared deeply about many people and that really comes across.
March 17, 2019
It can be tempting to review the life instead of the book and this is a life, and world, that I knew little about. In any case, it is an extremely fluid, well-written account of an epic life lived to the full. I am in awe of the honesty on show and found the later chapters - of how it is to be properly old - fascinating. Her spirit and energy is inspirational. I will reread this book again, I'm sure, as I get older, to be reminded that this is lots of living to be done yet. There is a lot to be said for answering random opportunities with a resounding 'Yes', no matter what. At the same time, there were times when she lost me. For example, I cannot understand the separate locations for the second marriage - well, I can and I can't. And, perhaps I am just being greedy for the wrong type of detail but I missed an instant reaction to Kirty MacColl's death. Still, it is a page turner of a life story!
September 2, 2019
A friend of mine described this as visiting Peggy who comes rushing to the door to greet you, grabs you by the hand, and starts talking - and there is a wonderful intimacy overall. She really tells you everything from the real first time with Ewan Maccoll to her health problems later in life. I'd have loved a little more context - and I was curious about some of the other musicians she knew - Rosalie Sorrel, Shirley Collins, but that's a tiny tiny quibble. This is a wonderful earthy fascinating memoir and a pure joy to read. I'd give it another half star if that was possible.
March 19, 2019
Honest and interesting account of an unusual life. Can't help thinking Peggy and Ewan could have had a much wider audience and influence with the talent and work ethic they had. I suppose traditional folk music was the winner with the amount of archival material and recordings they left. Well worth a read for anyone interested in the world of musicians and especially musicians who eschewed widespread popularity to follow their own path.
April 16, 2020
A fascinating life, and a strong willed individual, whose music I have only come across in her ninth decade, with the album Everything Changes, which is fabulous. Her self-awareness makes this memoir more interesting, and it is funny that there are certain dramatic events, which would grasp a biographer that get mentioned by her in passing years after they would fit into the chronological story, as she focuses on what, and who, are important to her story.
April 8, 2018
I read this, not because I'm a Peggy Seeger fan, but because I hoped the book would include her account of the 60s folk revival (Dylan, Cohen, Mitchell, Simon, Lightfoot, etc) and the Seeger family (Pete and Woody Guthrie, the New Lost City Ramblers, etc). There was precious little on either, so I was disappointed. Peggy Seeger's fans would probably like the book.
April 28, 2018
Very interesting, candid read - life as a musician is not an easy slog, toughest gig seems to have been her time with Ewan MacColl. Thanks though for some wonderful songs including 'Gonna Be An Engineer' and 'Love Call Me Home'. Good that love wins in the end but growing older does have it's challenges.
August 3, 2018
The book was interesting and appealing with some very touching moments. At times, though, the timeline seemed a little confusing. It might have been even more confusing if I hadn't read the biography by Jean Freedman. Probably if you have to choose between the two, read the biography. The biography is surprisingly easy to read for a scholarly project. Freedman wears her learning lightly.
September 24, 2024
This is a great memoir read by the author. She looks back over a long and varied life, sharing how world events impacted her singing career and how her style of folk music was perceived in the wider world of contemporary music. The book hangs together well and provides fascinating insight into a world that I know little about. Highly recommended for fans of American and British folk music.
August 8, 2025
A forceful and fearless firebrand, she really made me think how short life is and how important it is to make the most of every day. An exemplary lover of people, especially family; she learned not to put up with time wasters. Deeply personal memoir - thank you for sharing.
July 20, 2018
Ever so much stranger than I expected.
March 13, 2019
Fascinating woman who did just what she wanted. Amazing adventures.
July 30, 2020
Before listening to Peggy read this all I knew about her was that she sang, was related to Pete Seeger, was married to Ewan MacColl and wasn't Kirsty's mum now I feel I have known her forever. What an amazing woman, what an amazing life, what an amazing book. I can't recommended this enough.
April 22, 2024
A fine autobiography
August 17, 2025
A fascinating account of her life
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews