Leading off the disc with "The First Time Ever …" is a risky move. Most listeners are so familiar with Roberta Flack’s memorable, dramatic version that Seeger’s extremely low-key rendition may sound as if she doesn’t get it -- a strange notion, considering that Seeger’s is the "face" that inspired the song.

Seeger’s own "Primrose Hill," with its softly rendered, catchy melody is one of my favorites. I love its tightly structured refrain: "Come and walk in Richmond Park/Come and walk in town/Come sit on Primrose Hill/And watch the sun go down." The refrain reinforces the song’s linking of love with images from nature.

Seeger wrote "Autumn Wedding" for her brother Mike Seeger (they are half-sister and half-brother, respectively, of Pete Seeger). Playing on autumn's different meanings -- as a season of life as well as a season of the year -- the fourth verse goes, "A full life has taught him the price of tomorrow/A full life has taught her to lead as she follows/Both of them seasoned yet supple and bending/Love is preparing an autumn wedding."

The CD contains six original songs, four by other songwriters, and three traditional ballads. Of the traditional ones, I particularly enjoy "Fiddling Soldier." Many variations exist on this tale of a lady who, in this one, has "the raven black hair" and encounters "a soldier and a brave volunteer" who "took out his fiddle and tuned up one string/And he played the water gliding while the nightingale sing." The singer beseeches the soldier to "play one tune more/For I’d rather hear your fiddle and the touch of one string/Than to see the water gliding, hear the nightingale sing" and pleads with him: "O ho, said the lady, will you marry me?/O no, cried the soldier, that never can be/I’ve a wife in old Ireland and children I’ve three/One wife is a-plenty, too many for me."