Fred Hellerman dies at 89
Fred Hellerman, 89, the last of the Weavers
By Thane Grauel and John Burgeson Updated 5:18 pm, Friday, September 2, 2016
Singer and composer Fred Hellerman, the last surviving member of the folk band the Weavers, died Thursday morning home. He was 89.
His son, Caleb, said he had undergone a long decline in health, and was surrounded by family when he died. There will be no funeral, but a memorial event with music will take place in the coming months.
The Weavers, whose other members were Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Ronnie Gilbert, helped spark a national folk revival by churning out hit recordings of "Goodnight Irene," ''On Top of Old Smokey," ''If I Had A Hammer," ''Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" and "Wimoweh."
The group was hugely popular before being targeted by anti-Communists and blacklisted during the Red Scare. Their popularity returned in the 1960s; the group released more than 25 LPs over the years, and at least 16 are still available on CD and vinyl. Seeger died in 2014 at age 94, Gilbert died in 2015, and Hays in 1981.
Before the Weavers, Hellerman played rent parties with Woody Guthrie. He later produced “Alice’s Restaurant” for Woody’s son, Arlo Guthrie.
“He basically bought this house with his ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ money,” Caleb Hellerman said of the family home on Goodhill Road in Weston, purchased in 1970. It has a record studio where numerous musicians recorded, including Seeger.
Hellerman is survived by his wife, Susan Lardner, who was a staff writer for The New Yorker for 20 years before teaching English at Norwalk Community College for three decades; his son Caleb, a science journalist and television producer from Framingham, Mass. and his wife, Daphne Copeland; a son Simeon, a professor of theoretical physicist at the University of Tokyo; and three grandchildren, Silas, Harper and Inman Hellerman of Framingham.
Caleb Hellerman said his father had a robust post-Weavers career as a writer, arranger and producer. He worked with many musicians, including Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Don McLean.
“Don McLean came to visit a lot,” Caleb Hellerman said of the artist who won a Grammy for his 1971 hit “American Pie.” “He initially called my dad as a fan but they became friends.”
Fred Hellerman also wrote for film and television, and worked with directors John Frankenheimer and Sidney Lumet.
“He always loved the stage — his first taste of show business was working with the famous Yiddish Theatre in New York,” Caleb Hellerman said.
Fred Hellerman worked on local projects as well, writing the music for "Out on a Limb," a 1978 production based on the works of James Thurber at the Westport Playhouse starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He was a founding member of the Theatre Artists Workshop in Westport in 1983. He wrote music for "The Other Side of Paradise," a stage biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald starring Keir Dullea, performed in Wilton in the 1990s.
Fred Hellerman grew up during the Depression in Brooklyn the son of a shopkeeper. As a skinny 17-year-old he tried to enlist in Coast Guard near the end of World War II.
“He didn’t make the weight limit,” Caleb Hellerman said. “He went out, bought lunch and took his change in pennies.”
With stuffed pockets, he made the weight and shipped out to patrol the North Atlantic on a weather ship.
The Weavers formed in 1948 and disbanded in 1964. The group played a reunion concert Carnegie Hall in New York City on Nov. 28, 1980. The reunion was chronicled in the 1981 documentary “The Weavers: Wasn’t that a Time.”
Fred Hellerman’s boys had grown up around musicians and artists, but until seeing the movie when he was 8 or 9, Caleb Hellerman said, he didn’t know the impact his father had.
“That was when it hit me, his place in the world,” Caleb Hellerman said. “Up until then he was just a great guy … I didn’t have that bigger picture of what was going on.”
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