Capitol Records' 1967
Pete Seeger LP
Freight Train is a retitled reissue of the label's 1964 album
Folk Songs by Pete Seeger. "Never-before released masters," proclaimed a legend on the front cover of that LP, and when the much smaller print on the back cover revealed, "Released by agreement with Folkways Records," some explanation was offered for how it could be that an album of previously unreleased recordings by
Pete Seeger, who is contracted to Columbia Records, was being issued by Capitol Records, one of Columbia's rivals.
Seeger's tenure at Columbia, which dates back to 1961, doesn't seem to have interfered with his work for the tiny independent label Folkways, which predates his association with the major record label; Columbia hasn't felt that Folkways' continuing to pump out
Seeger albums assembled from its vast archives constituted competition, given its limited distribution. Of course, having Folkways license material to Capitol was another matter entirely, and Columbia couldn't have been pleased about it. What made
Seeger a viable candidate for such a release was his renewed prominence as of 1964. Arguably the godfather of the folk revival, his profile had been raised in recent years by Capitol's
Kingston Trio, who charted with his song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"; by the success of his song "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)," by
Peter, Paul & Mary; by the controversy surrounding his exclusion from the network television series Hootenanny for his political background; and by the success of his Columbia album
We Shall Overcome and its chart single "Little Boxes." As of 1967, he had, if anything, gained even greater prominence, due to the attention given his opposition to the Vietnam War. Whatever its title, the album of 12 songs Capitol got from Folkways emphasizes
Seeger's ties to traditional folk and country music, starting with the opening track, "T.B. Blues," his version of a song by the yodeling brakeman
Jimmie Rodgers. Other songs, such as "Careless Love" and "Red River Valley," also fit into the traditional country category, or would if
Seeger didn't sing them without a trace of a Southern accent. Elsewhere,
Seeger provides his takes on some folk songs that have been popularized by the likes of
Burl Ives ("Jimmy Crack Corn") and
Peter, Paul & Mary ("Freight Train," "This Train"). He also takes on some of his well-known political concerns, addressing inflation on "Dollar Ain't a Dollar Any More," the plight of farmers in "Banks of Marble," and conservation in "Coyote." Still, this is not a collection that comes off as primarily political. Rather, it is, as it was called at first, an album of
Folk Songs by Pete Seeger.