If everyone is singing a song and it seems to be overdone, you might want to shelve it for awhile, but don't fall in with the "everything is disposable" mentality that modern society seems to be lumbered with. No matter how many times a good song has been sung, it's still a good song. It's not like a worn-out ball point pen. There is an infinite number of performances left in it.

When I first started singing folk songs in the early Fifties, it took awhile to find sources of songs. The first song book I picked up was a copy of A Treasury of Folk Songs compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb (drug store paperback), a nice collection of about ninety songs, including Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, Careless Love, Streets of Laredo, Froggie Went a-Courtin'—you get the idea. All old war-horses that you don't hear sung much anymore, of if you do (say, the ballads in particular), they're usually sung in some far-out, exotic version. Next was Lomax's Folk Song U.S.A., Sandburg's American Song Bag, and Dick and Beth Best's Song Fest. That was about all that was available, unless one started to dig in the local library, which I did.

Back in the Mists of Antiquity (in the early Fifties, well before the 1958 Kingston Trio recording of Tom Dooley kicked off the Great Folk Scare), in this area, a couple of folk music nuts like Sandy Paton and Walt Robertson, plus three or four others like me—whom other folks regarded as a bit weird—were constantly grubbing around trying to find songs to learn. One of our main sources was the folk music bin at Campus Music and Gallery. It contained about a dozen records, all 10" LPs:   mostly Burl Ives, one or two by Susan Reed, a Josh White or two, a couple by Richard Dyer-Bennet, one by Cynthia Gooding (wow!!), Pete Seeger's Darling Corey album on Folkways, and one by Kathleen Ferrier (opera singer) with piano accompaniment. That was what one had to draw upon for building a repertoire of songs.

I would say that about 80 or 90 percent of the songs that were being sung back then, I never hear anymore. Most of the better known ballads back then (the aforementioned Barbara Allen, for example) just aren't done anymore and a lot of the younger singers don't know them at all, and may have never even heard them (except maybe if they saw "Songcatcher").

This declaring songs "uncool" is really kinda dumb! Some time back, I came to the conclusion that, "uncool" or not, if I like a song and feel impelled to learn it and sing it, I'll go right ahead. The principles I operate on are to use my own arrangements but don't do anything freaky or cute with the song to try to make it "new and interesting;"   just sing the standard version and try to do it the best I can. Put it across as is. Just sing it well.

I got all five of the Mudcat "Blue Plate Special" CDs some time back, and, among other things, I took special note of Sandy Paton's beautiful, straight-forward rendition of When You and I Were Young, Maggie—which is an old "parlor song." And it got me noticing other songs of that general type, such as Home, Sweet Home. I also started taking a good look into Stephen Foster songs. Good stuff, really. And although there have been threads here trashing such songs as The Fields of Athenry, as far as I know, nobody around here does it, so I learned it and I sing it. And people ask me to sing it. So there!!

Declaring songs "uncool"—now that's really uncool! If a few self-styled super-sophisticated snobs sit there and roll their eyes, that's their hang-up.

If you like it, sing it!!

Don Firth