Pete Seeger at Lake Placid High School Auditorium — July 5, 1971

Fifty-five years ago, the dean of American folk music brought his banjo and his sing-along gospel to a high school auditorium in Lake Placid. Pete Seeger — blacklisted in the ’50s, vindicated by the ’60s, and by 1971 the conscience of the folk revival — turned every room he played into a communal chorus, from “If I Had a Hammer” to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” A New York State icon who would spend his life cleaning up the Hudson, here he was working the Adirondacks, proving a single voice and a banjo could fill any hall.