Mike Seeger: Farewell to the New Lost City Rambler

So yeah, our knowledge and understanding of American vernacular music wouldn’t be what it is were it not for Seeger’s profound contributions. But believe or not, they kind of pale in comparison to the man’s music. With his group the New Lost City Ramblers, Seeger revolutionized how folk revivalists interpret American roots music. Before the Ramblers hit the scene in the late 1950s, the overwhelming majority of liberal, urban folkies in places like New York City and Boston followed the aesthetic lead of Pete Seeger and the Weavers. They would adopt the words of classic folk tunes such as "Darlin' Cory" or "Tom Dooley" while more or less whitewashing the music. The end result was an acoustic-based sound that was sterile, stiff and painfully Caucasian.

The Ramblers were different and radically so. They actually sounded like their heroes: the aforementioned Dock Boggs, Charlie Poole, the Carter Family, the Skillet Lickers and so on. Studying one scratchy, old 78 record after another, Seeger and company strove to master every strange accent and archaic turn-of-phrase.

The Ramblers were one of the very first revival groups to put folklorist Alan Lomax’s cantometrics theory (which he unveiled in 1958 and '59) into practice. As Neil V. Rosenberg wrote in his tome Bluegrass: A History, "[Lomax] was now deeply involved in the development of a theory which posited a direct and essential link between musical performance styles and culture. He at once began preaching this theory, which he eventually named ‘cantometrics,’ to the 'folkniks.' Singing the words and melody is not enough, he said; one must perform songs in the style of their culture. Singing style, he asserted, conveyed the emotional content of the song."

This, of course, sounds obvious enough in 2009, but back in the 1950s it was an utterly radical concept -- and really quite controversial. Remember, this was a good five years before the Rolling Stones hit the States with their imitation of American blues, and folkies started embracing rock 'n' roll. The Ramblers were totally wild sounding; coffeehouses had never seen anything like them. Here were three white guys from New York City getting down with fiddle music as if they were born and raised in a holler in southwest Virginia’s Clinch Mountains. They were cool and soulful and, most of all, intense. Audiences were utterly mesmerized. Here’s what Bob Dylan said of Seeger in his book Chronicles, Volume 1: “What I had to work at, Mike already had in his genes, in his genetic makeup. Before he was even born, this music had to be in his blood.”

But Seeger wasn't just an imitator. Over the course of more than 40 albums, both as a solo artist and with the New Lost City Ramblers, the master stylist pioneered a sound that bridged our country’s rural-urban divide. For him Appalachia wasn't a geography; it was a state of mind.

When all is said and done, Seeger was an American folk musician. Plain and simple.

P.S. For more on Mike Seeger's music, check out our In Memory of Mike Seeger playlist.