MEL AND VINNIE are no Siskel & Ebert.
But when the Lake Worth Beach singing duo gives two thumbs up to an Oscar-nominated portrayal of their old friend, the folk icon Pete Seeger, it’s an endorsement not even the most seasoned movie critics could offer.
Seeger, a songwriter and activist who spearheaded an American folk revival, wrote the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” and hits like “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” He used folk music as a catalyst for change, a formula honed from his friendship with mentor Woody Guthrie (“This Land is Your Land”).
He also offered guidance and encouragement to emerging musicians who came into his orbit, most famously a young Bob Dylan in the early ‘60s, a period spotlighted in the 2024 Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.'' (In the clip below, Seeger introduces Dylan at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.)
Among Seeger’s post-Dylan disciples: Maryellen Healy and Vincent Cerniglia, amateur folk musicians who met Seeger in 1978 and 1981, respectively. The duo would go on to perform as Mel and Vinnie and forge a deep friendship with Seeger that lasted until his death in 2014.
Although “A Complete Unknown’’ takes place from 1961 to 1965 — well before they met Seeger — they said actor Edward Norton’s portrayal captures the spirit and personality of the man they worked and sang with in Clearwater, the grassroots environmental group Seeger founded to raise awareness to pollution in the Hudson River.
“I think Ed Norton did a great job of getting Pete's demeanor. It kind of tugged at the heartstrings at times how close he got it,’’ Mel said. “He wasn’t imitating Pete. He seemed to have his own personality and he let Pete's personality into his.’’
Mel and Vinnie met each other for the first time in 1983, five years before they got married. And it was Seeger who brought them together.
Mel started getting involved in Seeger’s environmental music projects in 1978. She devoted more of her time to boatbuilding and sailing after being laid off in 1982 from her job as a special education teacher in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She performed with Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Singers and crewed on the Clearwater and its sister sailboats, the Woody Guthrie and the Sojourner Truth.
Seeger and his followers sailed the replica 19th-century sloops up and down the river, performing concerts and offering free rides to the public to raise awareness to the river’s beauty and the urgency to preserve it.
Mel learned to sail on the Woody Guthrie, became second mate on the Clearwater for three years and coordinated the construction of the 42-foot red-sailed Sojourner Truth. She earned the honor of breaking a bottle of champagne across the bow to christen the boat in 1981. (Seeger’s wife Toshi christened the Clearwater, and Nora Guthrie christened the sloop named after her father.)
Vinnie arrived in 1981. Working as a claims examiner for the New York State Department of Labor, the former Boy Scout and basketball enthusiast from Brooklyn was assigned to Beacon, N.Y., Seeger’s hometown. Clients told him about a local sloop club. It wasn’t long before he hopped aboard and joined the other singing sailors.
He spent weeks traveling to festivals aboard the Woody Guthrie, where he said he earned a whimsical “claim to fame” as Seeger’s bunk mate.
“The boat wasn't very big. Two people could sleep below deck and everyone else slept above,’’ said Vinnie, who was not a quiet sleeper. “Pete slept below and they threw me in with Pete because Pete was half deaf and I snored so loud.’’
The first time Mel noticed Vinnie, he made quite an impression; Vinnie was wearing a giant Mother Hudson costume in a puppet show at a community event called the Pumpkin Sail.
Three years later, they moved in together. In 1988, they got married. It was around that time they started performing as Mel and Vinnie, taking their acts to Earth Day gigs, folk shows and awareness events, at times plugging in from the bed of Seeger’s pickup truck.
“Pete had a big chorus that sang behind him. He was very encouraging to all musicians around,’’ Mel recalled.
In 2009, Mel and Vinnie became Lake Worth Beach snowbirds after visiting relatives in the area. Before long they were fixtures in the city’s quirky arts and music scene. In 2010, they wrote what many consider the Lake Worth Beach anthem, “It Feels Like Home To Me.’’
They played downtown spots like Havana Hideout and the South Shores Tavern, even a short gig at City Hall in 2014 when the city flirted with the idea of building a Major League Baseball spring training complex at nearby John Prince Memorial Park: They brought their guitars to a City Commission meeting and performed “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
After making Lake Worth Beach their permanent home, the couple stayed connected to Seeger. They made frequent visits to the Hudson River Valley and exchanged letters and postcards — Seeger always signed with a banjo cartoon.
“If you wrote him a letter, he'd write a letter back to you. And even when he was too old to write a letter, he had a form letter that said ‘I can’t write letters to everybody’ — and then he’d write on it anyway,’’ Vinnie said with a laugh.
Mel and Vinnie produced albums to raise money for sloop maintenance. The latest is “Broad Old River 2” and includes five songs from the 1986 Great Hudson River Revival in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
When Seeger died in 2014, Mel was invited to speak at his memorial service in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.. She and Vinnie produced a tribute show in Lake Worth featuring speakers and musicians from the Hudson River Valley and South Florida.
The duo celebrates Seeger each year with a potluck song circle on his birthday. The next one is May 3 at the Lake Worth Beach Public Library.
When “A Complete Unknown” was released in December, they went to Movies of Lake Worth to watch it. They enjoyed it so much they saw it again a few weeks later.
The film, they said, stirred fond memories of their friendship with a man who was honored with a Lifetime Grammy Achievement Award in 1993, a National Medal of Arts from President Clinton on the South Lawn of the White House in 1994, and an induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
For Vinnie, the movie’s climactic scene recalled a private conversation he had with Seeger about what many consider a pivotal moment in rock history — the night Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, shocking the folk music establishment.
The movie is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric!” The book chronicles Dylan’s decision to perform with a Fender electric that night, backed for the first time on stage by a rock ‘n’ roll band.
The film recreates the ensuing chaos — the boos, bottles hurled at the stage, and anger from festival board members, including Seeger, who by this point of the film becomes Dylan’s narrative foil.
According to one legend — it’s hinted at in “A Complete Unknown” and recreated in Todd Haynes’s 2007 Dylan movie “I’m Not There” — Seeger tried to cut the speaker cables with an axe.
Neither Mel nor Vinnie was at Newport — they both were 13 at the time. But they said Seeger told them the axe incident never happened. Vinnie said he shared what he knew with Wald in social media chats in 2012 or 2013.
Vinnie said he broached the question to Seeger for the first time in 1982. He said the singer explained that he’d brought his 79-year-old father, Charles Seeger, to the show so he could hear Dylan sing “Maggie’s Farm.”
Charles Seeger was partially deaf and used a hearing aide, Vinnie said. The loud sound from the electric guitar drowned out Dylan’s voice and caused distortion in Charles Seeger’s hearing aid, according to Vinnie.
“Pete went to the sound people and asked them to lower the volume so they could hear the lyrics. But the people at the soundboard said, ‘No, that’s the way they like it,’’’ he recalled.
“What Pete said to me (was) if he had an axe he would have cut the cable. He was angry about it but there was nothing he could do,’’ he said, repeating comments Seeger has offered in interviews.
Seeger was a folk purist, but he had no objections to electric guitars, Vinnie said. “He just wanted to hear the lyrics and he thought just because it’s electric doesn’t mean you have to play it loud,’’ he said.
“A Complete Unknown” takes a few creative liberties. Mel and Vinny said they gave two thumbs down to the film’s “demure” depiction of Seeger's wife, Toshi, who they knew well and remember as a strong, active “gatekeeper” who “was as much Pete's manager as anyone.’’
But they said Norton’s portrayal of Seeger was nearly spot on and it wouldn’t surprise them if it earns him the Best Supporting Actor Award on March 2. (The film has eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Timothee Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan and Best Director for James Mangold.)
“What was really sweet was the scene (near the end of the movie) where you see Pete picking up the chairs and cleaning up after the festival. That is what Pete did. He came early, wherever the festival was, in the morning, cleaning up garbage and making sure the place was clean,’’ Mel said.
“The essence of what Pete did,’’ she said, “was bring people together and singing.’’
This clip shows Pete Seeger performing with Mel, Vinnie and other musicians at a Hudson River awareness event in Newburgh, N.Y, in 2004:
For more information about Mel and Vinnie, visit melandvinnie.com or email spittoonstudios@gmail.com.
About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.