Given
Pete Seeger's oft-expressed disdain for conventional pop music and its lyrics about teenage romance, it should be no surprise that even though Folkways Records here is releasing a
Seeger album with the words "love songs" in the title, they are not your usual sort of love songs. That is clear enough from the prepositional phrase that modifies the term: "for friends and foes." True,
Seeger does refer to romantic and even erotic love in such selections as the traditional folk song "She Moves Through the Fair" and his solo version of the old hit by his group
the Weavers, "Kisses Sweeter than Wine." But for the most part, he is interested in singing songs about love of country, of peace as opposed to war, and of universal brotherhood as opposed to segregation and bigotry. In fact, this is as political an album as
Seeger has ever assembled, including his version of
Ed McCurdy's paean to peace, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream," as well as his own co-composition (with fellow
Weaver Lee Hays), "If I Had a Hammer (Hammer Song)," with its tribute to "the song about love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land." Among his foes,
Seeger counts "Mr. Bilbo" (i.e., U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo, D-Mississippi, 1877-1947), whom he instructs in
Bob Claiborne's "Listen, Mr. Bilbo" about how immigrants and minorities helped discover, found, and defend America. In "Black and White," meanwhile, he is joined by an unnamed chorus of children on a song concerning the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools. There are traditional folk songs and lively instrumentals on which
Seeger whistles or plays the chalil interspersing the political tracts. But
Love Songs for Friends and Foes is among the singer's more vociferous statements of his liberal social views.