We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, released in 2006, is the fourteenth studio album by Bruce Springsteen.
This is Springsteen's first and so far only album of non-Springsteen material and contains his interpretation of thirteen folk music songs made popular by activist folk musician Pete Seeger. As an activist and artist of folk music, Seeger did not write any of the songs on the album. His life's work focused on popularizing and promoting the ethic of local, historical musical influences and recognizing the cultural significance of which folk music embodies.
The record began in 1997, when Springsteen recorded "We Shall Overcome" for the Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger tribute album, released the following year. Springsteen had not known much about Seeger given his rock and roll upbringing and orientation, and proceeded to investigate and listen to his music. While playing them in his house, his 10-year-old daughter said, "Hey, that sounds like fun," which caused Springsteen to get interested in further exploring the material and genre.
Via Soozie Tyrell, the violinist in the E Street Band, Springsteen hooked up with a group of lesser-known musicians from New Jersey and New York, and they recorded in an informal, large band setting in Springsteen's New Jersey farm. In addition to Tyrell, previous Springsteen associates The Miami Horns as well as wife Patti Scialfa augmented the proceedings. This group would become The Sessions Band.
The album was Springsteen's second consecutive non-E Street Band, non-rock music project. The critical reception to the album was very positive, with E! Online calling it his "best album since Nebraska and Allmusic labeling it "rambunctious, freewheeling, [and] positively joyous". PopMatters called it a "a sonic transfusion on the order of the Mermaid Avenue records", which were Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Seeger himself was pleased by result, saying "It was a great honor. He's an extraordinary person, as well as an extraordinary singer."
The album, like its predecessor Devils and Dust, has been released on DualDisc, in a CD/DVD double disc set, and as a set of two vinyl records.
For the DualDisc and CD/DVD sets, the full album is on the CD(-side), while the DVD(-side) side features a PCM Stereo version of the album and a short film about the making and recording of the album. Two bonus songs also appear on the DVD(-side).
The subsequent Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour took this musical approach even further.
On October 3, 2006, the album was reissued as We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions - American Land Edition with five additional tracks (the two bonus tracks from before and three new numbers that had been introduced and heavily featured on the tour), new videos, an expanded documentary and liner notes. Rather than a DualDisc release, the American Land Edition was released with separate CD and DVDs. Added sales were minimal.
The album won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 49th Grammy Awards held in February 2007.
The album had sold 700,000 copies in the United States by January 2009; the RIAA certified it with gold record status.We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, released in 2006, is the fourteenth studio album by Bruce Springsteen.
This is Springsteen's first and so far only album of non-Springsteen material and contains his interpretation of thirteen folk music songs made popular by activist folk musician Pete Seeger. As an activist and artist of folk music, Seeger did not write any of the songs on the album. His life's work focused on popularizing and promoting the ethic of local, historical musical influences and recognizing the cultural significance of which folk music embodies.
The record began in 1997, when Springsteen recorded "We Shall Overcome" for the Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger tribute album, released the following year. Springsteen had not known much about Seeger given his rock and roll upbringing and orientation, and proceeded to investigate and listen to his music. While playing them in his house, his 10-year-old daughter said, "Hey, that sounds like fun," which caused Springsteen to get interested in further exploring the material and genre.
Via Soozie Tyrell, the violinist in the E Street Band, Springsteen hooked up with a group of lesser-known musicians from New Jersey and New York, and they recorded in an informal, large band setting in Springsteen's New Jersey farm. In addition to Tyrell, previous Springsteen associates The Miami Horns as well as wife Patti Scialfa augmented the proceedings. This group would become The Sessions Band.
The album was Springsteen's second consecutive non-E Street Band, non-rock music project. The critical reception to the album was very positive, with E! Online calling it his "best album since Nebraska and Allmusic labeling it "rambunctious, freewheeling, [and] positively joyous". PopMatters called it a "a sonic transfusion on the order of the Mermaid Avenue records", which were Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Seeger himself was pleased by result, saying "It was a great honor. He's an extraordinary person, as well as an extraordinary singer."
The album, like its predecessor Devils and Dust, has been released on DualDisc, in a CD/DVD double disc set, and as a set of two vinyl records.
For the DualDisc and CD/DVD sets, the full album is on the CD(-side), while the DVD(-side) side features a PCM Stereo version of the album and a short film about the making and recording of the album. Two bonus songs also appear on the DVD(-side).
The subsequent Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour took this musical approach even further.
On October 3, 2006, the album was reissued as We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions - American Land Edition with five additional tracks (the two bonus tracks from before and three new numbers that had been introduced and heavily featured on the tour), new videos, an expanded documentary and liner notes. Rather than a DualDisc release, the American Land Edition was released with separate CD and DVDs. Added sales were minimal.
The album won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 49th Grammy Awards held in February 2007.
The album had sold 700,000 copies in the United States by January 2009; the RIAA certified it with gold record status.false2025-11-08 06:10:32We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions20062006-01-012006-01-0161Folk1112772110211b8e3691e-8e3e-4ad8-8545-f2ad5deb789c70248960-cb53-4ea4-943a-edb18f7d336f602387fa-a76f-3895-9039-1c812c6cb28c/media/data/media5/Music/Bruce Springsteen/We Shall Overcome_ The Seeger Sessions/folder.jpgBruce SpringsteenBruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums during a career spanning six decades, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. He is an originator of heartland rock, a genre combining mainstream rock music with poetic and socially conscious lyrics that tell a narrative about working-class American life. Nicknamed "The Boss", he is known for his descriptive lyrics and energetic concerts, with performances that can last more than four hours.Springsteen released his first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, in 1973; neither earned him a large audience. He then changed his style and achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run (1975). This was followed by Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980), which topped the Billboard 200 chart. After the solo album Nebraska (1982), he reunited with his E Street Band for Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which became his most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. All seven of its singles reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the title track. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for the recording of his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), then recorded the acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and the EP Blood Brothers (1996).
Seven years after releasing The Ghost of Tom Joad—the longest gap between any of his studio albums—Springsteen released The Rising (2002), which he dedicated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. He released two more folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), followed by two more albums with the E Street Band: Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009). The next two albums, Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014), topped album charts worldwide. From 2017 to 2018, and again in 2021, Springsteen performed the critically acclaimed one-man show Springsteen on Broadway which saw him perform some of his songs and tell stories from his 2016 autobiography; the album version was released in 2018. He then released the solo album Western Stars (2019), the album Letter to You (2020) with the E Street Band, and a solo cover album Only the Strong Survive (2022). Letter to You reached No. 2 in the U.S. and made Springsteen the first artist to score a top five album across six consecutive decades.Listed among the album era's most prominent acts, Springsteen has sold more than 71 million albums in the U.S. and over 140 million worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has earned numerous awards, including 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, named MusiCares person of the year in 2013, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016, and awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Joe Biden in 2023. He ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of the Greatest Artists of All Time, which described him as being "the embodiment of rock & roll".