There is something inherently valuable in the material released by the Smithsonian Folkways label that goes well beyond its artistic merit. Scholars like John & Alan Lomax, Harry Smith, and Moses Asch who recorded and compiled folk songs conceived of their work as musical appreciation, yes, but also as cultural preservation. It is this preservationist attitude that informs the selections and performances on Pete Seeger's American Industrial Ballads. A protégé of Woody Guthrie's, Seeger has lived his whole life steeped in the songs and stories passed down by generations of Americans. Consequently, his knowledge of the folk milieu in which he performs is every bit as encyclopedic as the archivists who document it. Over the course of 24 tracks, Seeger takes listeners on a tour of coal mines, cotton mills, picket lines, homesteads, rail yards, and the shabby dwellings of the underpaid and overworked. Lively characters inhabit these places; some are the tragicomic protagonists of hard-luck ballads and some are the feisty wiseacres damning the man and calling their comrades to arms. Long-gone lingo like "doffers," "bobbins," and "blacklegs" hearken back to a way of life that has since faded into the past, even as archaic songs like "Peg and Awl" presage further mechanization and the Luddite conflicts to come. You'll also hear plenty of black humor and hearty insights, like on "Hard Times in the Mill" when the narrator sardonically relates his morning routine: "Every morning, half-past five / gotta get up, dead or alive." And as much as these songs function as a receptacle of history - a time capsule for this priceless and poetic idiom - they are also a refuge for the workers who sang them and whose lives are sung in them. Seeger approaches the project with an earnestness that is both touching and catching. But his sincere reverence for the music borders on staid politeness. What he does resembles a studied act of anthropology more than it does a guitar pull or hoe-down. Had he truly wanted to resurrect the spirit and not just the letter of these tunes, he might have performed them in one of the union halls he loved so well. Grade: B-
