Mike Seeger

Mike Seeger, whose love for traditional songs and tunes inspired many other musicians — including Bob Dylan — to look for the rural roots of American music, died of cancer Friday night at his home in Lexington, Va. He was 75. Seeger was a highly respected performer and collector of traditional music and a major force in giving rural southern musicians a wider audience.

Mike Seeger quickly came to love traditional music, and began playing in earnest in his late teens. He developed major talent on banjo, guitar, fiddle, autoharp dulcimer, harmonica and several other instruments large and small. He sought out, learned from and recorded traditional musicians, starting in the Washington, D.C., area where he was raised, and ultimately traveling all over the south to find artists long forgotten or undiscovered.

He co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers with John Cohen and Tom Paley in the late 1950's. This trailblazing three-person string band combined the urban roots of its own members with a deep regard for music of the countryside and small towns. The Ramblers mined old 78 RPM recordings and visited with senior players, bringing largely forgotten music to life with new, yet traditional arrangements altogether more gutsy and respectful than those of most of the pop-folk groups active at the time.