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Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hays
During the Great Depression, Lee Hays, the son of a Southern Methodist minister, used his music to life the hearts of sharecroppers and miners and union organizers. He helped bring black music to America's consciousness. He could make people laugh in times when there seemed little to laugh about. An Arkansas traveler and radical minstrel, he commented wryly on events and impaled reactionary southern congressmen on their own words. A kind of Mark Twain of the left, people said. But Lee Hays, for all his great size and talents and humor, was also a difficult man, plagued by self-doubts and a driving need to discombobulate any person or group that struck him as self-satisfied.
Lonesome Traveler is the story of a prodigious talent with a zeal for changing the world. With Pete Seeger he formed the popular folksinging group the Weavers, which sang songs of social justice just as a tidal wave of red-hunting hit America. The rest of his legendary story will anger, touch, and delight.
Lonesome Traveler is the story of a prodigious talent with a zeal for changing the world. With Pete Seeger he formed the popular folksinging group the Weavers, which sang songs of social justice just as a tidal wave of red-hunting hit America. The rest of his legendary story will anger, touch, and delight.
299 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 24, 2017
The first time I heard Lee's voice, I KNEW there was a brilliant man behind it. This book was exactly what I was looking for. Lee led an amazing life full of challenges and triumphs, and ups and downs. This book is a wonderful portrait of the complex personality behind the voice. While Lee was far from saintly, his heart was as big as the universe. He wanted to change the world, and in many ways he did, all while being authentic, and not trying to hide who he really was. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to meet the genius behind the voice. For the full effect, listen to his work with the Weavers and the Almanac Singers, while reading.
November 12, 2023
The closing chapter on Lee Hays in Jeff Sharlet's The Undertow reminded me that this book was gathering dust on my shelves. Technically, it's a re-read, since I read it when I bought it, but that was a long time ago and I certainly didn't remember much about it.
Doris Willens was a personal friend of Hays', including sharing living space and singing with him in The Babysitters, a children's music group that formed around him after the Weavers disintegrated. She's very open about that relationship and how she came to work on the book, and she seems to keep a respectable distance while writing about her beloved and sometimes incredibly irritating friend.
Hays grew up in middle-class Arkansas, youngest of 4. He left his family young and disappeared for over a decade, never getting back in touch until the Weavers started being successful. He was plagued with various illnesses, ending his life as a wheelchair user after several amputations caused by diabetes complications; he also had tuberculosis. He drank to excess and wasn't reliable about appointments, including rehearsals. He was also an excellent singer, brilliant at keeping an audience excited and engaged, and an active mentor to many younger people, something he did throughout his life.
Pete Seeger, who had a completely different personality than Hays, got Hays removed first from the Almanac Singers and later from the Weavers. Then, after Hays had returned to the Weavers, Seeger himself left the group. Tensions built around various issues: Hays' unreliability (which was apparently caused both by poor health and by uncontrolled alcohol use); Seeger's boundless energy, and all of the tensions that went with the group's vast commercial success. Success is often difficult for performers, and much worse for leftists who are expected to reject commercialism in all its forms.
All in all, Willens paints a portrait of a complicated, intense, difficult man, whom you couldn't help but care about and couldn't help but find frustrating. Now I need to go find a good biography of Pete Seeger.
Doris Willens was a personal friend of Hays', including sharing living space and singing with him in The Babysitters, a children's music group that formed around him after the Weavers disintegrated. She's very open about that relationship and how she came to work on the book, and she seems to keep a respectable distance while writing about her beloved and sometimes incredibly irritating friend.
Hays grew up in middle-class Arkansas, youngest of 4. He left his family young and disappeared for over a decade, never getting back in touch until the Weavers started being successful. He was plagued with various illnesses, ending his life as a wheelchair user after several amputations caused by diabetes complications; he also had tuberculosis. He drank to excess and wasn't reliable about appointments, including rehearsals. He was also an excellent singer, brilliant at keeping an audience excited and engaged, and an active mentor to many younger people, something he did throughout his life.
Pete Seeger, who had a completely different personality than Hays, got Hays removed first from the Almanac Singers and later from the Weavers. Then, after Hays had returned to the Weavers, Seeger himself left the group. Tensions built around various issues: Hays' unreliability (which was apparently caused both by poor health and by uncontrolled alcohol use); Seeger's boundless energy, and all of the tensions that went with the group's vast commercial success. Success is often difficult for performers, and much worse for leftists who are expected to reject commercialism in all its forms.
All in all, Willens paints a portrait of a complicated, intense, difficult man, whom you couldn't help but care about and couldn't help but find frustrating. Now I need to go find a good biography of Pete Seeger.
February 13, 2023
It must be said that there are very few books that have made me tear up. Not because I am particularly cold-hearted or stoic. It simply seems that most of what I read is rather academic, taking a detached view of their subjects. Even fewer are the books that have made me tear up perhaps once for every chapter. Doris Willens' biography of Lee Hays has done just that.
Truly a magnificent work of both folk music and left-wing history, this book details Hays' move from a literally starving orphaned son of an Arkansas Methodist preacher to a student and collaborator of the great labor Reverend Claude C. Williams, the bass voice of the Almanac Singers, the leader of Pete Seeger's "People's Songs" effort, the bass voice of the (in)famous Weavers, a man who faced down the horrid HUAC hearings, friend of Cisco Houston, an author, humorist, poet, and above all, a human being. There are few biographies which successfully humanize their subjects to the point where one not only identifies with them, but can imagine themselves holding a conversation. I would give a lot to be able to speak to Lee Hays. Perhaps we all can, given how much of his life is recorded in his music.
Truly a magnificent work of both folk music and left-wing history, this book details Hays' move from a literally starving orphaned son of an Arkansas Methodist preacher to a student and collaborator of the great labor Reverend Claude C. Williams, the bass voice of the Almanac Singers, the leader of Pete Seeger's "People's Songs" effort, the bass voice of the (in)famous Weavers, a man who faced down the horrid HUAC hearings, friend of Cisco Houston, an author, humorist, poet, and above all, a human being. There are few biographies which successfully humanize their subjects to the point where one not only identifies with them, but can imagine themselves holding a conversation. I would give a lot to be able to speak to Lee Hays. Perhaps we all can, given how much of his life is recorded in his music.
October 8, 2022
Well researched. Well written.
I love the music, and enjoyed learning where it came from.
Made me wish I could've been there.
I love the music, and enjoyed learning where it came from.
Made me wish I could've been there.
November 8, 2011
Unusually for a biography we read of Lee Hays warts and all - if American folk music or the HUAC blacklist interests you you will find this book fascinating - read it while listening to a recording by The Weavers and it will be even better as you will hear Lee Hays' voice and his songs.
May 4, 2008
This is a book for Lee Hays fans, but if you're in that category, it's a must-read -- the story of a brilliant, openly joyous, quietly bitter activist and musician.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews