Song of the Day 5/4: Pete Seeger, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

H/t to RE Vanella, who pointed out that yesterday would have been Pete Seeger’s 100th birthday. In addition to playing a key role in the 20th century folk music revival, the Seeger composition that has aged best is his adaptation of a passage in Ecclesiastes set to a simple, plaintive melody. Most of Seeger’s overtly political songs sound like historical artifacts today. “Turn! Turn! Turn!” is timeless because it saves its message for the last line, Seeger’s only lyrical addition to the 2,300-year-old text.

Seeger wasn’t the first to record his song. That honor went to the Limeliters on their 1962 LP “Folk Matinee.”

Among the musicians on the Limelighters album was a young Jim, later Roger, McGuinn. The next year he was working with Judy Collins when he re-arranged the song, smoothing out the rhythm. Once he got to the Byrds, he perfected the arrangement that took it to No. 1 on the charts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPbR3uovtf8

The song was the biggest hit of the Byrds’ career, and McGuinn is often asked to perform it, several times for Seeger himself. Here he joins Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, worth a listen just to hear the Boss sing harmony.