This is the basic manual for banjo players at any level. Covers all the fundamentals of strumming, hammering-on, and pulling-off. Includes folk and traditional songs all with melody line, lyrics, and banjo accompaniment, and solos in standard notation and tablature.

Folk singer and labor organizer John Handcox was born to illiterate sharecroppers, but went on to become one of the most beloved folk singers of the prewar labor movement. This beautifully told oral history gives us Handcox in his own words, recounting a journey that began in the Deep South and went on to shape the labor music tradition.

Long an icon of American musical and political life, Pete Seeger has written eloquently in books and for magazines, activist movements, and union newsletters. Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn. In "Pete Seeger in His Own Words," we hear directly from Seeger through the widest array of sources letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, and poetry creating the most intimate picture yet available of Seeger as a musician, an activist, and a family man in his own words and from his own perspective. From letters to his mother written when he was a 13-year-old desiring his first banjo to speculations on the future, this book covers the passions, personalities, and experiences of a lifetime of struggle the pre-WWII labor movement, the Communist Party, Woody Guthrie, the blacklist, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, the struggle against the war in Vietnam, Bob Dylan, travels around the world, cleaning up the Hudson River, Granny D, Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton, and countless uncelebrated activists with whom Seeger has worked and sung. The portrait that emerges is not a saint, not a martyr, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his gift, his time, and his place. Click Here to listen to Pete Seeger's interview on WNYC with Brian Lehrer "Hearing Pete Seeger," Alec Wilkinson's review for "The New Yorker" Culture Desk on Pete Seeger's latest event in Bryant Park. An article by the New Haven Register."

Descended from African American slaves, Native Americans, and white slaveowners, John Handcox was born to a family of poor Arkansas sharecroppers at one of the hardest times to be black in America. Over the first few decades of the twentieth century, he survived attempted lynchings, floods, droughts, and the ravages of the Great Depression to organize black and white farmers alike on behalf of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. He also became one of the most beloved folk singers of the prewar labor movement, composing songs such as Roll the Union On and There Is Mean Things Happening in this Land that bridged racial divides and kept the spirits of striking workers high. Though he withdrew from the public eye for nearly forty years, missing the folk boom of the 1960s, he resurfaced decades later - just in time to denounce the policies of the Reagan administration in song - and his work was embraced by new generations of labor activists and folk music devotees. This fascinating and beautifully told oral history gives us John Handcox in his own words, recounting a journey that began in a sharecropper's shack in the Deep South and went on to shape the labor music tradition, all amid the tangled and troubled history of the United States in the twentieth century.

Twenty-seven years in the making (1940–67), this tapestry of nearly two hundred American popular and protest songs was created by three giants of performance and musical research: Alan Lomax, indefatigable collector and preserver; Woody Guthrie, performer and prolific balladeer; and Pete Seeger, entertainer and educator who has introduced three generations of Americans to their musical heritage. In his afterword, Pete Seeger recounts the long history of collecting and publishing this anthology of Depression-era, union-hopeful, and New Deal melodies. With characteristic modesty, he tells us what’s missing and what’s wrong with the collection. But more important, he tells us what’s right and why it still matters, noting songs that have become famous the world over: “Union Maid,” “Which Side Are You On?,” “Worried Man Blues,” “Midnight Special,” and “Tom Joad.” “Now, at the turn of the century, the millennium, what’s the future of these songs?” he asks. “Music is one of the things that will save us. Future songwriters can learn from the honesty, the courage, the simplicity, and the frankness of these hard-hitting songs. And not just songwriters. We can all learn.” In addition to 123 photographs and 195 songs, this edition features an introductory note by Nora Guthrie, the daughter of Woody Guthrie and overseer of the Woody Guthrie Foundation.

Lyrics and guitar chords for nearly 1,200 songs are arranged in a compact, easy-to-use format in this comprehensive collection. Folk revival favorites; Broadway show tunes; Beatles' songs; hymns, spirituals, and gospel standards; songs about peace, freedom, labor, and the environment are among the types of songs included. This revised and retypeset large-print version of the enormously popular songbook makes this essential resource easy to read and useful in leading large and small groups.

Long an icon of American musical and political life, Pete Seeger has written eloquently in books and for magazines, activist movements, and union newsletters. Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn. In "Pete Seeger: His Life In His Own Words," we hear directly from Seeger through the widest array of sources letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, and poetry creating the most intimate picture yet available of Seeger as a musician, an activist, and a family man in his own words and from his own perspective. From letters to his mother written when he was a 13-year-old desiring his first banjo to speculations on the future, this book covers the passions, personalities, and experiences of a lifetime of struggle the pre-WWII labor movement, the Communist Party, Woody Guthrie, the blacklist, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, the struggle against the war in Vietnam, Bob Dylan, travels around the world, cleaning up the Hudson River, Granny D, Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton, and countless uncelebrated activists with whom Seeger has worked and sung. The portrait that emerges is not a saint, not a martyr, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his gift, his time, and his place.

"How Can I Keep from Singing?" is the compelling story of how the son of a respectable Puritan family became a consummate performer and American rebel. Updated with new research and interviews, unpublished photographs, and thoughtful comments from Pete Seeger himself, this is an inside history of the man Carl Sandburg called "America's Tuning Fork." In the only biography on Seeger, David Dunaway parts the curtains on his life.
Who is this rail-thin, eighty-eight-year-old with the five-string banjo, whose performances have touched millions of people for more than seven decades? Bob Dylan called him a saint. Joan Baez said, "We all owe our careers to him." But Seeger's considerable musical achievements were overshadowed by political controversy when he became perhaps the most blacklisted performer in American history. He was investigated for sedition, harassed by the FBI and the CIA, picketed, and literally stoned by conservative groups. Still, he sang.
Today, Seeger remains an icon of conscience and culture, and his classic antiwar songs, sung by Bruce Springsteen and millions of others, live again in the movement against foreign wars. His life holds lessons for surviving repressive times and for turning to music to change the world.
"This biography is a beauty. It captures not only the life of the bard but the world of which he sings."
-Studs Terkel
"A fine and meticulous biography . . . Dunaway has taken [Seeger's] materials and woven them into a detailed, interesting, and well-written narrative of a most fascinating life."
"-American Music"
"An extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man [that] will intrigue not only his legions of followers but everyone interested in one man's battles and victories."
"-Chicago Sun-Times"

PERHAPS BEST known for Broadside, the influential magazine they founded in 1962, Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen have long been renowned figures on the American left. In this book, these two dedicated social activists -- Sis the folk musician and Gordon the radical journalist -- offer a spirited account of their personal and political odyssey. The story is illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings.

Born into poverty in rural Oklahoma, further shaped by the hardships of the "dustbowl" Depression years, Sis and Gordon were already committed to radical causes when they met and married in 1941. A short time later they moved to New York City, where they befriended Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Sis joined the folk protest group the Almanac Singers, and Gordon continued his work as a journalist.

Although blacklisted for their political views during the McCarthy era, Sis and Gordon persevered and eventually launched Broadside, which they continued to produce for almost twenty years. The magazine was instrumental in promoting the careers of many singer-songwriters, publishing the first works of such artists as Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Tom Paxton, as well as the works of more established figures, including Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger. Indeed, Broadside helped give birth to a musical revival that energized the country and forged a vital link between the folk music of the 1930s and 1940s and the urban folk revivalists of the 1960s and 1970s.

Cy Adler authored the first complete guide to walking from the southern tip of Manhattan at Battery Park all the way up to Bear Mountain near West Point. With all the new changes to the West Side of Manhattan since that guide was published, Walking the Hudson, the new and fully revised guide to this fabulous route, will be much appreciated by walkers, history buffs, and anyone who wants to experience this great area up close and under their own power. The route is nicely broken into segments of 2 9 miles each so one can walk as little or as much of the route as desired at a time. The average walker can finish the entire route in two to four days.

The Spanish Civil War served as an ideological and physical battleground for visionary Americans wishing to combat the spread of fascism. Harry Fisher was one such idealist who became a solider in the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of international volunteers dedicated to defeating Franco's forces. Fisher was one of the earliest American volunteers and one of the few to participate in all the major battles. Under a barrage of shells, bombs, and bullets for eighteen months, he lost his illusions about war's efficacy in solving political issues. To this day a despondence often overwhelms him when he recalls a family photograph he found jutting from the pocket of a slain fascist soldier. His involvement taught him that up close, the dead, whether fascist soldiers or his own fallen comrades, looked alike. This is a war story, simply told. Yet it is also a complex story about a young man testing his ideology in the harsh realities of battle.

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.

Bursting with historical, cultural, and natural abundance, the Hudson River Valley region has captured the imaginations and the hearts of generations of writers, artists, and adventurers. Now two Hudson Valley natives have teamed up to capture the beauty and the passion of this special region. More than 100 full-color photos lavishly display the varied terrain from the sheer, abrupt cliffs of the Shawangunk range to the quiet, tidal backwaters along the river and the serene mystique of the fertile countryside. From covered bridges to lighthouses, from ice climbing to bucolic vistas, there is something here for every set of eyes. Photos are gracefully complemented with rich text from one of the region's most experienced and dedicated travel writers.