Pete Seeger dies

NEW YORK (AP) — He was best known for songs such as "If I Had a Hammer," ''Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

Folk singer and song-writer Pete Seeger has died at age 94.

His family says Seeger died Monday in New York City hospital, where he had been hospitalized for six days.

Seeger's grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson said his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep around 9:30 p.m. at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been for six days. Family members were with him.

"He was chopping wood 10 days ago," Cahill-Jackson recalled.

Born in 1919, Seeger was active as a musician from the 1930s to the present, with his music becoming a part of our culture. Seeger wrote hundreds of songs, performed by many of the greats in American Folk Music.

Seeger — with his a lanky frame, banjo and full white beard — performed with the great minstrel Woody Guthrie in his younger days and marched with Occupy Wall Street protesters in his 90s, leaning on two canes. He wrote or co-wrote "If I Had a Hammer," ''Turn, Turn, Turn," ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." He lent his voice against Hitler and nuclear power. A cheerful warrior, he typically delivered his broadsides with an affable air and his banjo strapped on.

Seeger’s career as a mainstream performer with The Weavers was ended by the Red Scare. He was blacklisted and sent to jail for refusing to answer questions about his former ties with the Communist party.

He re-emerged as a pioneer of protest music. His song “We Shall Overcome” became the anthem for the Civil Rights movement. Another song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” was written in 1962 to protest the Vietnam War – and still resonated four decades later in a concert against the war in Iraq.

His latest albums, “A More Perfect Union” and “Pete Remembers Woody,” were released in 2012. He was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three years later.

His longtime wife, Toshi, died in July at the age of 91.