Nov 07, 2017 - Sale 2461

Sale 2461 - Lot 169

Price Realized: $ 6,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
"PETEY SEEGER IS A REAL CHAMPION" GUTHRIE, WOODY. Autograph Letter Signed, to Sing Out! magazine ("Dear Singy Outy All in One"), in red, blue, and green ink, praising Pete Seeger's activism, and comparing Seeger's singing and personal style to that of Ewan MacColl, and praising the magazine. 2 pages, 9 1/2x15 inches, written on the recto and verso of a paper towel in columns of alternating ink color with some parts inverted or written vertically; minor bleed-through throughout, folds. "Brooklyn State Hospital" [New York], "On top of old April" 1955

Additional Details

". . . I sure do believe that Petey Seeger is a real champion at more jobs than floggin his wire stringy banjo or singin his ever better & better & better and better folks old songs. He sounds honester to my poor old exploited ear than any whole big train load of Ewan Macall's [sic]. I don't reckon that Macall has ever walked his land from end to end like Pete has, . . . nor has Macall ever tried to make his great country's own poverty and misery and deep deep unfed hunger and worries and fears and hurts and hopes all rhyme, nor beat to time of a ballad song on any musicsyial instrument like Pete has and habitually does. . . .
"I guess Ewan is a fine hearted honest hard workin man like England and Scotland are so full of by the uncounted millions and to me Ewan does the best job of singing exactly what his pappa and his mamma and all his ancestors and all his back generations of dead miners have told Ewan and had sung to him all his life about. He . . . sings not about what his own life sees around him but what his ancestors lived thru and heard and sang out about. . . .
"Every word you folks print up there is printed on a high high hard hittin hard fightin level and all your printed words needs is just a blue jillion people to sing em up and out . . . ."