31.10.10 Peggy Seeger
Peggy Seeger has created 22 solo discs and has taken part in more than 100 recordings with other performers. Her best-known songs are “The Ballad of Springhill” and “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer.”... She also inspired the greatest love song ever written "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Ewan MacColl.
Peggy was born into a very notable folk music family: Her mother was the composer and folklorist Ruth Crawford Seeger, her father Charles Louis Seeger, a pioneer of ethnomusicology. Her half-brother is Pete Seeger, and her brother Mike Seeger. Between the ages of 12 & 35, Peggy learned to play piano, guitar, 5-string banjo, autoharp, Appalachian dulcimer and English concertina. In 1959, after a time working as a touring musician, she settled in London with Ewan MacColl. The MacColl/Seeger duo were at the forefront of the British folksong revival for the ensuing three decades. The MacColl-Seeger work was seminal – its high point was the development of the revolutionary Radio Ballad form, a tapestry of field recordings of speech and sound effects melded with new songs in the folk idiom and complementary instrumental accompaniments.