I started singing folk songs in around 1952 or '53, and the first folk songs I learned, I got from a little drugstore paperback entitled "A Treasury of Folk Songs" compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb. I also got a copy of a folio of twenty songs sung by Richard Dyer-Bennet and a copy of Carl Sandburg's "The American Songbag." I learned a couple of songs from Claire, the girl I was going with at the time, whose interest in folk songs pretty much ignited mine.

I also learned a mess of songs from Walt Robertson (CLICKY), who I hit up for lessons. Along with songs he sang himself, he had me working out of The Burl Ives Song Book, the Lomaxes' Best Loved American Folk Songs. And a potful of songs from LP records by Burl Ives and Richard Dyer-Bennet in particular, later from Theodore Bikel, Joan Baez, Ed McCurdy, Guy Carawan, and bunches more.

Along with other singers I was around all the time, who also learned songs from me.

It never occurred to me that I was singing "covers" of other people's songs. Because, among other things, they were NOT other people's songs. They were public domain and it was rare when anyone knew who had written them originally. "Greensleeves?" No, not Henry VIII. "Barbara Allen?" Who knows who wrote it originally. And I could go on and on.

Also, songs I learned from Richard Dyer-Bennet or Burl Ives records. How could I be "covering" them when they are both tenors and I am a bass-baritone? I have to sing them in different keys and this means my guitar accompaniment can't be the same as theirs.

Covers? Who am I covering?

Dumb idea.

Also:   "If you can't write your own material don't pretend to be a musician."

Really!!???

Are interpretive artists NOT musicians?

I wonder how many operas Luciano Pavarotti, Jan Peerce, George London, or Rene Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, or Maria Callas have written? Or how may symphonies Eugene Ormandy has written? Or how many piano sonatas Claudio Arrau has written? Or how many works for the violin Itzhak Perlman has written? Is it the case that Leonard Bernstein is a musician when he is playing or conducting his own compositions, but NOT when he is conducting a work by, say, Beethoven?

(Shall I go on?)

And here all this time, I thought these folks were real fine musicians. Silly me!

Don Firth