Categories
Bruuuuuuuuce!!

Bruce’s CD is superb!!

BOSS NOD A TREAT FOR PETE
There won’t be a Pete Seeger album called “The Bruce Springsteen Sessions.”
“My voice is too far gone,” Seeger says with a hearty laugh. It would be too embarrassing.”
It could be a fun idea, he concedes, but “I’d have to listen to all those records.”
Springsteen’s tribute to the folk singer, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” is out today.
The New Jersey rocker first immersed himself in Seeger’s songbook for a 1998 tribute album, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” on Appleseed Recordings, for which he contributed “We Shall Overcome.”
But Seeger, who turns 87 on May 3, says he’s “practically never” heard any of Springsteen’s work. “I wouldn’t recognize him if I heard him.”
He did, however, hear The Boss singing “Born in the U.S.A.” on TV.
After a phone call from Springsteen to tell him about the album, Seeger got a copy a little more than a week ago.
“I’m a very conservative person, and if I was a teacher, I would never hand out an A-plus. So I would give this 31/2 stars [out of four]. It’s a very exciting album,” Seeger says.
“He does some unusual things. He sings the old spiritual, ‘O Mary Don’t You Weep’ ” – Seeger sings a bit over the phone.
“But he does it at the top of his lungs, at the top of his range, in minor, not major. I never heard anybody do that.
“Bruce has a wonderful, powerful voice,” Seeger says. “I think he made some good choices.”
Seeger doesn’t usually listen to records.
“I don’t particularly enjoy it. I like making music, but I don’t like listening to it,” he says. “I’d rather chop trees or dig ditches or help my wife clean up the house.”
But curiousity got him to listen to Springsteen’s work – once.
“It’s a very honest record. He did it like he felt, like he wanted to do it. Not like somebody told him to do it,” he says.
On the lullaby “Froggie Went a-Courtin’,” “he pounded it out, with drums and everything,” Seeger, chuckles.
About the title track, the civil rights anthem that Seeger helped popularize, he pays Springsteen a high compliment:
“I think that some of the people who originally sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ would be very proud to hear his recording of that because it’s a beautiful, beautiful recording.”