Pete Seeger

At the height of the folk revival, between the years 1957 and '62, Pete Seeger released a five-volume collection titled American Favorite Ballads. Primarily sold to schools and libraries, they were intended as teaching guides, so kids could learn the basics of the American folk tradition. We're talking chestnuts like "Yankee Doodle," "Gypsy Davy," "You Are My Sunshine" and so on. In addition to the five original albums, this box set boasts a fat stack of bonus tracks culled from the same era.

If Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music was the folk revival's bible, these
recordings — 139 songs from the Fifties and early Sixties — read like its dictionary, from the
obscure (the amusing "My Sweetheart Is a Mule in the Mines") to the familiar ("Black Girl,"
covered by Nirvana as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?") to the ingrained ("Oh, Susanna").
Seeger, who turned 90 this year, invests each tune with his cheeky spirit. Many... More >