Peggy began learning the piano at six, guitar at 10, and banjo at 15. There was so much music in the suburban Maryland home, she says, that she only listened to her radio for The Lone Ranger, Inner Sanctum, and Backstage Wife. Frequent visitors included Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Elizabeth Cotton. The diminutive Guthrie, her equal in height when she was nine years old, carried his guitar without a case, dragging it by its strap like a dog on a leash. Elliott also happened to be on the S.S. Maasdam when Seeger left Radcliffe College to kick around Europe; they had hootenannies in every corner of the ship.
She would find the other major influence in her life across the puddle: British playwright and songwriter Ewan MacColl (1915-89), her life partner for over 30 years. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," his best-known song, can be tied to a precise moment: "March 25, 1956, at 10:30 in the morning," Seeger remembers—the moment they met.
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was written by Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger during the course of a transatlantic telephone call in 1957, who needed a short fill-in number for a concert she was giving in the States.
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