Pete Seeger's 1959 Tribute to Lead Belly: Living in the Country

After years of searching, I found Pete Seeger’s 1959 tribute to Lead Belly, a unique rendition of Pete’s well-known 12‑string guitar instrumental, Living in the Country.

Pete introduces Track 4, I Knew Leadbelly, as follows:

This friend of mine, who died just ten years ago this December, was during his life very little known outside of a narrow circle of people who loved his music. His music never got on the hit parade, until after he died. Six months after he died, his song, Goodnight Irene, sold about two million copies. Huddie Ledbetter didn’t play very fancy guitar, but what he played was so powerful, he couldn’t help but impress people; very straightforward.

What follows is a one-minute Lead-Belly-like instrumental that gracefully transitions into a 1¾ minute version of Living in the Country as I heard it for the first time in the ’60s. For that story, click here.

Pete Seeger in England is a 2016 re‑release by Fellside Recordings of two previous albums, Pete Seeger in Concert Vols. 1 & 2, recorded October 4, 1959 at the St. Pancras Town Hall, London, and a recording made of his concert in February 1964, at Free Trade Hall, Manchester. The recording is also available on Amazon. You can hear the beginning of the track on Amazon's UK website, here: I Knew Leadbelly.

Here is the description of Pete Seeger in England provided by Fellside Recordings:

The legendary American Folk singer’s career had been seriously knocked off course by the McCarthy witch-hunts into Unamerican Activities in the USA affecting artists believed to be communists. At one stage Seeger was facing a ten year prison sentence, but he managed to visit the UK in 1958. The concert was recorded and issued by the Folklore label which emanated out of the Dobell’s record shop on Charing Cross road in West London. In 1964 he was back again and at one concert, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, he was recorded again.

Both concerts on this DOUBLE CD FOR THE PRICE OF ONE set are typical Seeger material of that time. He talks about his friends Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie and champions new songwriters like Tom Paxton and Malvina Reynolds. The concerts also give a wonderful insight to how Seeger worked an audience and had them eating out of his hand. His ability to engage the audience is an object lesson for young performers. The Folklore LPs had limited circulation and the Manchester concert has never been heard before. The booklet comes with an informative essay about Pete Seeger by Joe Stead.

Living in the Country

Every time I heard Living in the Country I said to myself, I must dig out that unique recording I have of Living in the Country, the one with that powerful, rhythmic, bluesy introduction that dramatically shifts into the light-aired melody everyone is familiar with. The one that Pete Seeger attributed to Huddie Ledbetter, that I recorded off the WQXR radio show, Folk Music of the World, programmed by Robert Sherman, in the late 1960s. It was the first time I heard it, and it became my aspiration, my obsession. I had to learn how to play it on the guitar. I even bought a 12-string. I listened to that tape repeatedly in high school and college, and then stored it away. And although I have heard many performances and recordings of Living in the Country by many artists, none of them approach that first one I heard by Pete Seeger. And although I said many times I should retrieve that tape, I never found the time.


A few years ago, my sister asked if I wanted my father's old Wollensak 7" reel-to-reel tape recorder. I said yes, anticipating that I would use it to play back that old recording. After all, it was the machine I had used to record that radio show in the first place. But the old Wollensak just laid there, gathering dust. I didn't even know if it still worked.

When Pete Seeger died I could put it off no longer.  I looked for those old 7" reel-to-reel tapes – in my old storage crate in the attic, in my cartons of old books, in my box of high-school treasures. Not there. I gave up. And then, days later,  I spotted them on the book shelf above my desk. I had retrieved them some years ago and placed them there – so they would be handy.

I opened the old Wollensak and cleaned off four decades of grime, only to find there was no take-up reel.  It took me a few days before I set about finding one on eBay: $3.00 (plus $5.94 for shipping) from a seller in Orlando, Florida. Then I had to wait several days for the auction to close, and more until finally the package arrived. But I had found not one but two of my old 7" reel-to-reel tapes and it would likely take hours to find that particular recording. I was too busy. 

I don't know what inspired me today to drop everything and listen to those recordings. And I got lucky – Living in the Country was one of the first recordings on the first side of the first reel. I was pleased.

I retrieved my bag of audio cables and adapters from the basement, a carry over from my college days when I thought myself knowledgeable in such matters. I connected the Wollensak's outputs to my computer's inputs in every conceivable configuration, to no avail. Audacity recorded hums and buzzes. Watching the afternoon tick by, I gave up and held a microphone in front of the Wollensak, a reversal of the process I had used to record the radio show (using a microphone in front of the radio speaker) some 45 years ago.

The quality of the recording is poor, but still conveys the essence of this unique arrangement.

The host of the radio show provides a brief introduction to these two versions of Living in the Country.  The first version is from a London recording made in 1959. I searched the web but was unable to find a better quality version. (See update below).  It starts with Pete Seeger talking about Huddie Ledbetter and he seems to attribute Living in the Country to him. Indeed, "Living in the Country" is likely a reference to "Goodnight Irene," Lead Belly's #1 hit song of 1950, that has the line, "Sometimes I live in the country."  It is unlike any other recording of Living in the Country, starting with a powerful, rhythmic, blues section that breaks into the lighter melody with which we are so familiar. The second version is the well-known "whistling" version that appears in numerous recordings by Pete Seeger and other artists.

You can listen to my recording of Living in the Country from the Folk Music of the World radio show here.

But that's not quite the end of the story. You see, I've been trying to find the lyrics to Living in the Country for as long as I've been trying to play it on the 12-string. I thought I saw the lyrics printed in an issue of Sing Out! magazine, but the lyrics did not turn up in a search of it's archives. To the best of my recollection, here they are.

Living in the Country

I'm living way out in the country
I rarely come into the town.
It's always so lovely, delightful,
I wish that you would come around.

Oh, please, won't you come away with me.
We'd be so happy living in the country.

Work all day,
Laugh and play,
Sing this song to you.

Perhaps I will retrieve my old 12-string from the attic.

Update June 19, 2019

I recently found Pete Seegers 1959 recording, I Knew Leadbelly which was recently re-released, as described here.

"Goodnight, Pete, I'll see you in my dreams"*

I wrote to Pete Seeger in 1969, inviting him to perform at our Earth Day celebration at Cornell University, the first one, to be held on April 22, 1970. He wrote back, saying he couldn't come because "I am up to my ears in projects which I have started on and have not finished ..." (He added, "There is another singer from the Hudson River Sloop who I believe would be very good ... Don McLean ... He is an extraordinarily talented young fellow who within a year or two is going to become very famous." He was right. Don McLean's American Pie was a number 1 hit song in 1972 and the number 5 Song of the Century.)

Pete ended up singing at the Washington, D.C. celebration of Earth Day, but he did give a concert for us at Cornell.  One of my friends, also a Pete Seeger fan – and an automobile enthusiast, was eager to find out what kind of car he was driving. He was disappointed when Pete called from the Ithaca bus station asking if someone could pick him up and give him a ride to the campus. When Pete found out that his concert at Bailey Hall was sold out, he offered to give a free performance afterwards. We had to scramble to find a sound system that we could use outdoors.

While Pete Seeger was best known for his songs and music, he was also a great storyteller. Telling a story to introduce or reflect on a song is part of the folk music tradition, and the stories were a good part of what attracted me to folk music (although aspiring to play Pete Seeger's guitar instrumental, Living in the Country, was a big attraction too).  Here is one of his many stories that has stuck with me, from “Seek and Ye Shall Find,” on his album, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs. It's no coincidence that in 1974 I named my publishing company This Too Shall Pass Press.

The King and His Wise Men

There was once a king in the olden days. He had three sons and he wanted to give them a good education. He called in his wise men, he said I wish you’d boil down all the world’s wisdom into one book that I’m going to give my sons and have them learn it. So the wise men went away, took them a whole year, and they came back with a beautiful leather-bound volume, trimmed in gold. The king leafed through it. “Hmm. Very good. Yes, this is it.” He gives it to his sons, and said, “Okay, learn it!”

Then he turned to the wise men and he said, “You know, you did such a good job with that, I wonder if you couldn’t boil down all the world’s wisdom into one sentence. Well, the wise men went away, it took them five years. They came back, their beards must have been dragging on the ground, and they said, “Your majesty, we’ve decided upon a sentence. “What is it,” says the king. “This too shall pass.”

I guess the king didn’t have anything better to do with his wise men. He said, I wonder if you couldn’t boil down all the world’s wisdom into one word. The poor men must have groaned. They went away. It took them ten years. When they came back they were all bent over. The king said, “Oh yes, what was that word?” He’d forgotten all about his little whim. They said, “Your majesty, the one word is: maybe.”

As I mourn his death and reflect on his life, I am pondering, "this too shall pass." And too, I am recalling his words from that letter he sent me in 1970, "I am up to my ears in projects which I have started on and have not finished ..." There is so much more to do, Pete, and you have done your part.

 "Goodnight Pete, Goodnight Pete, I'll see you in my dreams"*

* This line is adapted from Pete Seeger's first best seller, recorded by The Weavers, Goodnight Irene, which repeats the line, "Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams." I heard it this morning on WAMC radio as the closing line of one of the listeners who called in and thought it was a great tribute.