Peggy Seeger With Barbara And Penny Seeger‎ - The Three Sisters (1956)

Peggy Seeger is considered by many to be the female folksinger, responsible for the continuous upswing of folk music popularity. It is a fitting title, considering Peggy was living and breathing folk music since before she was born. Brought into musical history by Roberta Flack in the late 1970s, "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," one of the most stirring love ballads was penned in Seeger’s honor, by the late Scottish songwriter/folk singer, Ewan MacColl.

Born into a family already well immersed in the folk culture, Seeger and her siblings were raised with music surrounding them. Her mother and father, Charles and Ruth Seeger, were accomplished musicians and teachers, and they brought their business home with them, filling their homes in New York and Maryland with music and musicians and from cultures around the world. Their business was cataloging folk music for the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. According to Seeger, "They had me analyzing and transcribing tunes for an anthology at age eleven." Her parents often entertained the musicians they were cataloging, and Seeger was right along side, listening and learning. "We had always sung as a family, but when Mike and I learned folk banjo and guitar, the singsongs became weekly events," she reminisced on her website. According to Kristin Baggelaar in Folk Music—More than a Song, "it was through listening to other musicians and field recordings of singers and instrumentalists from all over the United States that she absorbed the folk idiom and developed her singing and playing techniques."

Their parents’ profession also influenced the rest of her siblings. Her brother Pete Seeger was a well-known political-protest folk musician who, while coming of age during the changing decades of the 1930s and 1940s, toured with Woody Guthrie. Her brother Mike also performed and wrote music. Seeger recorded the album Three Sisters, with her sisters, Penny and Barbara.

Seeger was gifted with the ability to learn musical instruments amazingly fast. Learning first on the piano at the age of seven and then moving on to other instruments, including the guitar, five-sting harp, string banjo, autoharp, Appalachian dulcimer and the English concertina. Her formal musical education took place at the prestigious Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she began using her voice as an instrument. She carried on her parents’ work by singing traditional songs.

After college, Seeger spent a lot of time touring the world, including living in Holland. She learned Russian and began adventuring to eastern countries like the former Soviet Union, China, and Poland. She also ventured through Europe and parts of Africa. In the mid 1950s Seeger was asked to perform in a London television production of Dark of the Moon. After becoming a British subject, she met the person who would become her biggest influence - and her future husband - Ewan MacColl. MacColl saw Seeger while rehearsing with a band called the Ramblers, and later penned his signature tune "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

After marrying in 1958, the couple went on to write, compose, sing, play and tour together for almost 30 years until MacColl’s death. Seeger is often quoted giving thanks to her husband who "helped me to crystallize a singing style and, most important, showed me who ‘the folk’ really are." Shortly after marrying MacColl, Seeger began writing her own folksongs. "Songwriting," quotes her website, "helps me to live in the present, ‘at the same time as myself,’ as Ewan MacColl used to say. It is my way of trying to let tomorrow’s people know part of what it was like to be alive today."

Considered to be one of North America’s finest singers of traditional songs, Seeger is credited with reviving the British folk music scene. Seeger has more than 100 recordings bearing her name, and over a three dozen solo albums, for numerous British and American labels. Her most recognized folksong "If I was an Engineer," was recorded in 1970 for the British Festival of Fools, as an ode to feminism.


Tracklist:

A1 Keokeokolo
A2 I'm Troubled
A3 I Truely Understand
A4 It's A Lie
A5 Newlyn Town
A6 Billy Barlow
A7 My Good Old Man

Medley Of Lullabies
A8a Baby Dear, Baby Dear
A8b Pretty Little Horses
A8c Go To Sleepy, Baby, Bye
A8d Great Big Dog
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B1 Little Black Train
B2 Henry Lee
B3 People Go Mind Your Business
B4 The Old Woman And Her Little Pig
B5 Green Valley
B6 Rissolty Rossolty
B7 Five Nights Drunk

Medley Of Play-Party Songs
B8a Shoe Round
B8b Old Pompey
B8c This Lady
B8d Hop Up, My Ladies

Peggy Seeger With Barbara And Penny Seeger‎ - The Three Sisters (1956)
(192 kbps, cover art included)