Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday

In 1985, I bought a used copy the album Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs (1967) at the Great Escape, a fine used record store in Nashville (still there, it seems). I don't remember what inspired me to do so. We didn't have his records around the house when I was younger, though we did have a large cache of Oscar Brand albums, and no one I ever knew in high school or college played Seeger records.

But buy it I did, and over the next three or four years bought as many second-hand Pete Seeger records as I could find, and made tapes of others that I found at public libraries. I saw Seeger live at Fisk University that year, and again at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center the next year.

"Songbird of the Kremlin," maybe, but I don't care. Living National Treasure, certainly, and still on stage occasionally.

"Seek and You Shall Find," a cut on Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, involved singing and storytelling by Seeger. One of the stories went like this:

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 the world's wisdom into one book, and I'm going to give it to 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. Hmm... Yes! This is it!" And he gives it to his sons and he says, "OK, 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. When they came back their beards must've been dragging on the ground. They said, "Your Majesty, we have decided upon the 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've 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."