Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
| "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" | |
|---|---|
Columbia Hall of Fame 45 rpm single release as 13-33088 featuring the November 1962 version | |
| Song | |
| Language | English |
| Released | March 14, 1955 |
| Length | 3:04 |
| Composer(s) | Pete Seeger |
| Lyricist(s) | Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson |
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" is a folk song written by American singer-songwriter Pete Seeger in 1955. Inspired lyrically by the traditional Cossack folk song "Koloda-Duda", Seeger borrowed an Irish melody for the music, and published the first three verses in Sing Out! magazine. Additional verses were added in May 1960 by Joe Hickerson, who turned it into a circular song. Its rhetorical "where?" and meditation on death place the song in the ubi sunt tradition. In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the "Top 20 Political Songs".
The 1962 album version of the song was released as part of the Columbia Records Hall of Fame 45 single series in 1965 as 13–33088. The recording of the song by Pete Seeger was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002 in the Folk category with the release year given as 1964 as a Columbia Records single.