As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962), Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962), and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964 and The Seekers. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more inspirational "We shall overcome".
Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan,[citation needed] the youngest of three sons. He came from a distinguished, prosperous family, which he described as "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition." His father, Charles Louis Seeger Jr. was a prominent musicologist, composer, and music professor. His mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, was a violinist and teacher, raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School.
Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan,[citation needed] the youngest of three sons. He came from a distinguished, prosperous family, which he described as "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition." His father, Charles Louis Seeger Jr. was a prominent musicologist, composer, and music professor. His mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, was a violinist and teacher, raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School.
