Pete is often considered the last significant album recorded by Pete Seeger, who had long ago abandoned the studio when he agreed to cut this music in 1996. The catalyst was new age artist Paul Winter, a friend of the folk icon’s, who produced the sessions. For the recording, Winter paired Seeger with three different vocal choirs and a group of sympathetic musicians (including Winter himself) ona set mostly comprising Seeger standards such as “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and “The Water Is Wide,” although “Huddie Ledbetter Was a Helluva Man,” a tribute to Lead Belly, was one of a few previously unrecorded tunes included. The performances are grand, the hugeness of the vocal groups contrasting sharply with Seeger’s banjo, and the team’s work paid off in the form of a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. The reissue doesn’t add any newly uncovered music to the 18-track CD, but it is packaged together with a DVD capturing a 1982 Connecticut festival featuring Seeger, the Paul Winter Consort and others. Watching it now, with Seeger having left us, one is struck not only by the warmth and sincerity in Seeger’s performance but also by the casualness of it all—some festivalgoers stroll past the small stage on their way to somewhere else without paying attention, oddly unaware that they’ve just passed up one of America’s greatest all-time musical treasures. He was not someone to take for granted.