Bluegrass Museum Gets Pete’s Banjo
The International Bluegrass Music Museum has acquired a banjo played by Pete Seeger through out the 1960’s. Musician Carl Pagter presented the Vega extended-neck banjo to the museum during a trustees meeting November 5th in Owensboro KY.
Pagter said Seeger donated the banjo, one of the early models in Vega’s late 1950s Pete Seeger series, to “Sing Out!” magazine for a subscription drive in the 1970s. The magazine was in financial difficulties and was using the banjo as a prize to raise money, he said.
Old-time musician Rick Abrams, a journalist and banjo player, was determined to win Seeger’s banjo and sold several of his instruments to keep buying more magazine subscriptions, Pagter said.
When Abrams, leader of the California-based Piney Creek Weasels, died of melanoma at age 47 in 1997, Pagter, a close friend, bought the Seeger banjo from Abrams’ widow.
The museum expects the banjo to become a major attraction. He’s not a bluegrass musician,” Kitsy Kuykendall, secretary of the board of trustees, said after the presentation. “But that’s what sets us apart from other museums. We celebrate not only bluegrass, but its roots and branches as well.”
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