Living in the Country (hear the mp4 here) is Pete Seeger‘s amazing 12-string guitar instrumental. Its melody is joyful, effervescent and irrepressible just like a summer’s day in the country. The music is pure life-affirming joy.
When I first heard this song sometime in the late 1960s (my father had a few Seeger records in his collection, but I can’t remember how or when I first heard this one) it was a musical revelation which is why I’m featuring it here.
You’ll note below that Pete agrees with me about the song’s seminal position in the Seeger canon:
I learned it from my sister forty years ago in 1956. She got it out of a book by Lydia Parish called “Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands”. I was fooling around on the guitar in the D tuning (6th string down one whole tone). I started with another song, “Pay Me My Money Down”, and gradually improvised a new tune off of it. I may never compose a better piece of guitar music (I’d like to but I probably won’t.)
—-LivingMusic.com
Pete also says about the song:
I was trying to play “Pay Me My Money Down,” which my sister Peggy had been singing, and all of a sudden I had a new tune.
—AcousticGuitar.com
I’ve done some online research to try to discover which of Seeger’s albums contains what may be the original recorded version. BestPrices.com lists song credits for Living in the Country on In Prague 1964. Since the song was written in 1962 or 1963, this may be its first appearnace on vinyl.
WARNING: This mp3 blog spreads the wonder and genius that is traditional music. By all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. You’ll be supporting the artists and providing a few pennies to pay my blog expenses.
