Peggy Seeger

Margaret "Peggy" Seeger (born June 17, 1935) is an American folk singer and songwriter. She has lived in Britain for more than 60 years and was married to the singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl until his death in 1989. She is a member of the Seeger family of musicians.

Seeger's father was Charles Seeger (1886–1979), a folklorist and musicologist; her mother was Seeger's second wife, Ruth Porter Crawford (1901–1953), a modernist composer who was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1936 after Charles' appointment to the music division of the Resettlement Administration.

One of her brothers was Mike Seeger, and Pete Seeger was her half-brother. Poet Alan Seeger was her uncle. One of her first recordings was American Folk Songs for Children (1955).

In the 1950s, left-leaning singers such as Paul Robeson and The Weavers began to suffer professionally because of the influence of McCarthyism and its resulting restrictive influence on performance venues signing leftist artists. Seeger visited the People's Republic of China and as a result had her US passport withdrawn. In 1957, the US State Department had opposed Seeger's attending the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, where the CIA had monitored the US delegation and was vigorously critical about her having gone to China during that trip against official "advice". The authorities had warned her that her passport could be impounded, which would bar her from further travel were she to return to the USA. Seeger decided to tour Europe and later found out that she was on a blacklist sent to European governments.

Seeger first met Ewan MacColl in 1956, when she went to London, after being offered a job by Alan Lomax to perform as a singer and banjoist with a folk group called The Ramblers. She fell in love with MacColl and started an affair with him even though he was then married to his second wife, Jean Newlove. Seeger moved back to the US and worked on a radio show in Los Angeles in 1957. Whilst she was there, MacColl wrote "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" for her. Seeger again met MacColl at the festival in Moscow. They later reconnected in France, in May 1958, and decided to have a child together. Previously married to director and actress Joan Littlewood, MacColl left his second wife, Jean Newlove, to become Seeger's lover.

While in France and without a UK work permit, a plan was concocted by MacColl and Seeger, in which she married the Scottish folk singer Alex Campbell, in Paris, on January 24, 1959, in what Seeger has described as a "hilarious ceremony". This marriage of convenience, which lasted three years, allowed Seeger to gain British citizenship and continue her relationship with MacColl. MacColl and Seeger were married 18 years later (on 25 January 1977), following his divorce from Newlove. They remained together until his death in 1989. They had three children: Neill, Calum, and Kitty. Seeger also became stepmother of singer Kirsty MacColl, MacColl's daughter from his previous relationship. They recorded and released several albums together on Folkways Records, along with Seeger's solo albums and other collaborations with the Seeger Family and the Seeger Sisters.^{[citation needed]}

Seeger was a leader in the introduction of the concertina to the English folk music revival. While not the only concertina player, her "musical skill and proselytizing zeal ... was a major force in spreading the gospel of concertina playing in the revival."