Pete Seeger took an interest in playing the 5-string banjo when he was 16 years old after he heard it played at the 1935 Asheville Folk Festival in North Carolina. It wasn't long after, when he was able to have a short lesson with banjoist Bascom Lamar Lunsford, known as the Minstrel of the Appalachians, where Seeger learned the basics of what would become his basic strum. From then on, Seeger made it a point to seek out, listen to, and learn from any banjo players that he met in his travels, learning a number of different playing styles which he experimented with in backing up his vocals.

This book looks at the techniques he was using when he was a member of the Almanac Singers in 1941, seven years before the publication of his first banjo method. Join Pete Seeger as he was evolving his early playing technique through the mid-1950s at the dawn of the folk music era!