[rating=8.00]
For his fortieth album, six-time Grammy nominee John McCutcheon delivers an album he’s been waiting to make for over fifty years. He takes a wide swath at the music of his friend and mentor Pete Seeger by enlisting the support of bluegrass band Hot Rize, Cajun unit Beausoleil, harmonies from Canada’s Finest Kind, Nicaragua’s Katia Cardenal, bluesman Corey Harris, along with Stuart Duncan, Suzy Bogguss, and Americana band The Steel Wheels. There are 30 musicians in the credits. Multi-instrumentalist McCutcheon plays guitars, hammered dulcimer, banjo and Tibetan singing bowl. If you didn’t have the title, To Everyone In All the World – A Celebration of Pete Seeger in front of you, you might not associate some of these tunes, and certainly not the arrangements with Pete Seeger. McCutcheon, through these diverse musical strains, in keeping with the title, makes Seeger a global figure in the year that marks Seeger’s centennial birthday.
In the liners McCutcheon cites that Seeger’s 1966 album We Shall Overcome is the first record McCutcheon purchased at age 16. That live concert recording made a lasting impression on him, as you can glean from this statement about the project, “This Is not a definitive survey of his work. I’ll leave that to scholars. Rather, almost all of these are songs I fell n love with as a teenager. They’ve gestated, morphed, and finally come out in a kaleidoscope of styles that, I imagine, would have amused and delighted old Pete. He was ever the alchemist: stirring the pot of this world and seeing what came out of it, in his concerts, in his writing, in his wide-ranging interests and imagination.”
The three most recognizable tunes are the requisite “If I Had a Hammer”(Beausoleil), and “Turn, Turn, Turn”(The Steel Wheels) along with “Guantanamera,” included here partly because McCutcheon’s wife is a Cuban. Seeger was a co-writer with Cuba’s National poet, Jose Marti. Katie Cardenal’s voice is beautiful in this duet, as horns and percussion round out the sound.
There are many surprises too. “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” (The Finest Kind) is a song from the 19thcentury that comes from a book of songs at girls’ schools. It was used as an anti-Nazi song in WWII Germany. The gorgeous love song about the Hudson River, “Sailing Down My Golden River” features touching vocals from Suzy Bogguss. “Letter to Eve” features some bluesy jazz from the horns, Jon Carroll’s keyboards and Pete Kennedy’s electric guitar. “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” is the song that got Seeger censored off the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. McCutcheon lifted the late John Jennings’ searing guitar solo from an earlier recording he did with him. McCutcheon’s brilliant hammer dulcimer playing is heard in tandem with Duncan’s fiddle on the instrumental “Living in the Country.”
As you’d expect, there are a couple of labor songs. “Mrs. Clara Sullivan’s Letter,” imbued by TJ Johnson’s dazzling mandolin, is a song that Seeger co-wrote with Melvina Reynolds from an actual letter she found in the Labor News. Corey Harris joins McCutcheon in an almost rap-like take on “Talking Union,” underpinning the lyrics with a slide guitar and funky rhythms.
Seeger has been pigeonholed by some as a traditional sing-along folk singer. McCutcheon reveals a much larger scope and inherent power of Seeger’s music in this celebratory effort.
