The Almanac Singers were an early folk-type group formed in the 1940's with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and later another Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugee, Woody Guthrie and Sis Cunningham (eventually, of BROADSIDE Magazine). They made up that name, because as they explained it, "folks owned only two books, the Bible and the Farmers' Almanac.", one to get them through this world, the other for the next.

The duo of Pete Seeger that grew to a trio was clever they way they lulled potential audiences into expecting rubes, but they snuck topicality with a socialist leaning into their terse lyrics, being some of the first music political commentators including early anti-war protesters at a time when that was not popular except with their progressive crowds like the American Youth Congress. They exposed Roosevelt songwise in February of 1941 -at one of those meetings- too far to the right! They would bring their guitars and banjos to sites where blue collar types were, and before they left, these workers would be not only joining in the choruses, but the cause.

In the spring of 1941, they added Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax' sister, Bess Hawes, and Sis Cunningham, but this group never all got together in the studio. They were more likely to be different combinations as a trio or quartet, and they would have guest stars such as Josh White, Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennett and even Leadbelly join them.

Ironically the Communist Party, whose New York offices were near the orginal trio lived, thought the boys too liberated in thought, they invited them to play for them; and they were used by ultra liberal parties and unionists for fund raising.

In hindsight it is easy to be critical of such idealogical naivite, but the poor at that time were especially downtrodden, and the far left sometimes seemed their only voice, and helped not hurt by the war against Fascists in the early forties as Communists seemed one of the forces fighting Nazis then.

Later in the spring of 1941 the first recordings with the collaboration of Alan Lomax, director Nicholas Ray, and record store owner Eric Bernay of the Keynote label was promoted by NBC's Joe Thompson. The theme in this historic and pioneering ensemble and their neutrality was evident on their Songs for John Doe, and strangely just after its release Germany attacked Russia, and they had to backtrack a wee bit. Bernay, who leaned to the left somewhat, also had arranged the Spirituals to Swing concert a few years before. ( A concert where the other backer, John Hammond, was too late in obtaining Robert Johnson's role, but brought Big Bill Broonzy.) They were successful enough with this first release to follow it with Talking Union, one that angered the first family. By summer, their third endeavor was toned down, Sod Buster Ballads and Sea Chanties made into an extended play production. After a road trip to California some disarray developed in their philosophical cohesion, and Lampell and Guthrie left Seeger and Hays behind, joined by various others from time to time.

Back East what was left of them created Almanac houses, a place for like-minded folks to stay and play. Just before the Second World War, they had strange neutrality bed-fellows with isoloationist Republicans, WWI vets and the rest of the fringe tres gauche. Pearl Harbor changed everything, now they, joined by Arthur Stern in Hays' stead, actually did a February 1942 broadcast called This Is War that caused such an acclaim that when the media investigated them for a potential story, their radical past had them dropped like a boiling rotten red potato. They fell apart, and blackballed, they never re-formed until the fifties when they birthed the Weavers. They lived on through their creation the "hootnanny" with the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan, thanks to Woody. In 1960 ABC had a folk music show called Hootnanny; and everybody has probably heard their Sloop John B out of their three dozen songs. Source: Broadside Vol 1 1965
AMG