Early years , Peggy Seeger's mother Seeger's father was
Charles Seeger (1886–1979), a folklorist and musicologist; her mother was Seeger's second wife,
Ruth Porter Crawford (1901–1953), a modernist composer who was the first woman to receive a
Guggenheim Fellowship. The family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1936, after Charles's appointment to the music division of the
Resettlement Administration. One of her brothers was
Mike Seeger, and
Pete Seeger was her half-brother. Poet
Alan Seeger was her uncle. One of her first recordings was
American Folk Songs for Children (1955).
First American period In the 1950s, left-leaning singers such as
Paul Robeson and
The Weavers began to suffer professionally because of the influence of
McCarthyism and its resulting restrictive influence on performance venues signing leftist artists. Seeger visited the People's Republic of China and as a result had her US passport withdrawn. In 1957, the US State Department had opposed Seeger's attending the
6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, where the CIA had monitored the US delegation and was vigorously critical about her having gone to China during that trip against official "advice". The authorities had warned her that her passport could be impounded, which would bar her from further travel were she to return to the USA. Previously married to director and actress
Joan Littlewood, MacColl left his second wife, Jean Newlove, to become Seeger's lover. While in France and without a UK work permit, a plan was concocted by MacColl and Seeger, in which she married the Scottish folk singer
Alex Campbell, in Paris, on January 24, 1959, in what Seeger has described as a "hilarious ceremony". This marriage of convenience, which lasted three years, allowed Seeger to gain British citizenship and continue her relationship with MacColl. MacColl and Seeger were married 18 years later (on 25 January 1977), following his divorce from Newlove. They remained together until his death in 1989. They had three children: Neill, Calum, and Kitty. Seeger also became stepmother of singer
Kirsty MacColl, MacColl's daughter from his previous relationship. They recorded and released several albums together on
Folkways Records, along with Seeger's solo albums and other collaborations with the Seeger Family and the Seeger Sisters. Seeger was a leader in the introduction of the concertina to the
English folk music revival. While not the only concertina player, her "musical skill and proselytizing zeal ... was a major force in spreading the gospel of concertina playing in the revival." The 1971 documentary film
A Kind of Exile was a profile of Seeger and also featured Ewan MacColl. The film was directed and produced by John Goldschmidt for ATV and shown on
ITV in the
UK.
Two social critics , Peggy Seeger's father Together with MacColl, Seeger founded
The Critics Group, a "master class" for young singers performing traditional songs or to compose new songs using traditional song structures (or, as MacColl called them, "the techniques of folk creation"). The Critics Group evolved into a performance ensemble seeking to perform satirical songs in a mixture of theatre, comedy and song, which eventually created a series of annual productions called "The Festival of Fools" (named for a traditional British Isles event in which greater freedom of expression was allowed for the subjects of the king than was permitted during most of the year). Seeger and MacColl performed and recorded as a duo and as solo artists; MacColl wrote "
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in Seeger's honour (and did so during a long-distance phone call between the two, while Seeger was performing in America and MacColl was barred from traveling to the US with her due to his radical political views). None of the couple's numerous albums use any electric or electronic instrumentation. Whilst MacColl wrote many songs about work and against war and prejudice, Seeger (who also wrote such songs) sang about women's issues, with many of her songs becoming anthems of the
women's movement. Her most memorable was "I'm Gonna Be an Engineer". There were two major projects dedicated to the
Child Ballads. The first was
The Long Harvest (10 volumes 1966–75). The second was
Blood and Roses (5 volumes, 1979–83). She visited the
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, where protests against US
cruise missiles were concentrated. For them she wrote "Carry Greenham Home". Seeger also ran a record label, Blackthorne Records, from 1976 to 1988.
Recent years After the fall of the
Soviet Union, US authorities began to soften their attitude towards Seeger. She returned to the United States in 1994 to live in
Asheville,
North Carolina. Seeger has continued to sing about women's issues. She recorded
Love Will Linger On in 1995. She has published a collection of 150 of her songs from before 1999. In 2011, Seeger edited
The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook. Her introduction gave a detailed account of her life with MacColl. She expressed some difference of political perspective between MacColl and herself. In 2006, Peggy Seeger relocated to
Boston, Massachusetts, to accept a part-time teaching position at
Northeastern University. In 2008, she began producing music videos pertaining to the
Presidential campaigns, making them available through a YouTube page. After 16 years of living in the United States, Seeger moved back to the United Kingdom in 2010 to be nearer to her children; since 2013, she has been living in
Iffley,
Oxford. In 2012, she collaborated with experimental dance producer Broadcaster on an album of her songs set against dance beats. Seeger is
bisexual and contributed an essay to
Getting Bi: Voices of bisexuals around the world. In it she details a relationship she began with the traditional singer Irene Pyper-Scott (who lives in
New Zealand) after Ewan MacColl died. Seeger performed "Tell My Sister" on a live tribute album to the late Canadian folk artist
Kate McGarrigle entitled
Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle. The album was released in June 2013. Seeger's memoir,
First Time Ever: A Memoir was published by
Faber and Faber in October 2017. A double CD of songs to accompany the memoir was released at the same time. Since early 2022, Seeger has been doing her "First Farewell" tour of Britain and Ireland. ==Selected discography==