Well, Kendall, don't believe everything you hear. The song of Paul Clayton's that formed the model for a few lines of "Don't Think Twice," was itself based on a traditional song. Again, part of what Pete Seeger calls the folk process.

No, I've never put a copyright on "Lorena." My friend, the late John Hartford did, though.

I do have copyrights on the traditional songs, like "Little Sadie," that I've recorded. That something Pete Seeger told me to do when I first started making records more than 40 years ago.

If you don't have a copyright on the traditional material that you record, that's extra money in the record company's pocket. No copyright means no royalty payment. If you look at any of The Weavers old recordings, you'll see that a lot of the traditional folk songs were written by a guy named Paul Campbell. There is no Paul Campbell. His royalties were divided between Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Freddie Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert.

You know, songs like "Rock Island," "Midnight Special" and even "Goodnight Irene," were not really written by Leadbelly. Those are much older songs. But in 1935, John Lomax took out copyrights on Leadbelly's name, and sometimes his own name too, so that the songwriter's royalties would go to Leadbelly rather than stay in record company's bank accounts.

Woody Guthrie had copyrights on traditional folk songs like "Buffalo Skinners," "Gypsy Davy" and "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad."

Even A.P. Carter, back in 1927, was putting his name onto traditional songs he didn't write. Carter Family songs that he wrote like "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wildwood Flower," were already old before old A.P. was even born.

Now Kendall, I know that you're a friend of Bruce Phillips. He's a great guy, I know him myself. There are bootlegs out there of me singing Bruce's song, "Rock, Salt and Nails." You know the one, it goes, "If the ladies were blackbirds, if the ladies were thrushes/If the ladies were squirrels with high bushy tails/I'd load up my shotgun with rock salt and nails."

Don't you know that Bruce based that on "Sally My Dear," an old folk song that Pete Seeger on his "Goofing Off Suite" record on Folkways back in 1955. Maybe you've heard it, it goes "If the girls were all blackbirds, if the girls were all thrushes...We'd see all the boys taking guns to go hunt them."

Maybe you know my old friend Tom Paxton. I used to sing a song of Tom's called "Deep Fork River Blues." Tom'll tell you that it's just a rewrite of an old Appalachian song called "Swannanoa Tunnel" that guys like Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Roscoe Holcomb used to do.

You see Kendall, I'm like my contemporaries Bruce Phillips and Tom Paxton, and I'm like previous folksingers like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and A.P. Carter, and many, many more. Some of what we do is just part of the folk process.