We need Pete Seeger today
Seeger read a book And Quiet Flows the Don". Written in Russia by the author, Mikhail Sholokhov, about the Cossacks along the river, Don. And at one point in the book, it had three little lines. It said--describing the Cossack soldiers galloping off to join the army of the czar way back in the 19th century singing, `Where are the flowers? -The girls have plucked them. Where are the girls?- They were all married. -Where are the men? They're all in the army.' And he says to himself, `Gee, that sounds like an interesting song, Then on a plane in 1955 on his way to sing at Oberlin College, he pulls out his notebook and sees those three lines, and he suddenly connected them with another line he'd written in his notebook, `long time passing.' then he thinks, maybe those three lines could fit together with that little phrase, long time passing, would sing well. And pretty soon, a tune comes to me. And then he added the end, the intellectuals' perennial complaint through the ages, `when will they ever learn.' And 20 minutes later, he had three verses to a song, and he--with scotch tape, stuck it to the microphone on the stage at Oberlin and sang it to the students that night.