Burl Ives was the first folk singer I ever heard of back in the 1940s. I used to listen to his radio program, "The Wayfaring Stranger," when I was in my teens. I think I learned more about American history up close from him than I did in school. He would talk about something like, say, the building of the Erie Canal, and sing a bunch of songs related to it. When I first got actively interested in folk music, some of the first songs I learned were from his records.

Burl Ives' early autobiography, The Wayfaring Stranger (1948), is well worth a read. It's been awhile since I read it, but I particularly remember where he says that he was in New York studying music at a music conservatory and living with a number of other music students. He was studying to be a singer of lieder (art songs), but when he got homesick, he'd take out his guitar and sing some of the songs he had learned from his grandmother. The other students made fun of the songs and mocked him. So one afternoon, he took his guitar to a nearby park. He wasn't thinking of busking or anything like that, he just wanted to sing a bit with no one around but a few pigeons.

It wasn't long before a few children stopped to listen, then more and more people drifted in. Before long he was doing an impromptu concert for a sizable and very appreciative crowd.

He made a decision then. "Why am I killing myself trying to develop a repertoire of songs that are really foreign to me, language and all, when I already have a large repertoire of songs that I've been singing all my life?"

He dropped out of the conservatory and started singing folk songs, and the rest is history.

As I say, it's been awhile since I read the book and I may have got a detail or two wrong, but this is as I remember it.

Don Firth

P. S. Regarding the HUAC business:   well after the hearings, Woody Guthrie, who didn't seem to be into bearing grudges, dropped in on Burl Ives in California and they spent some time together, even swapping some songs. When Woody came back east, he was asked about Ives. Woody responded, "He's one angry man!" "What's he so angry about?" he was asked. Woody answered, "He's angry with himself!"

So, all things considered, I think that if those whom he harmed by his testimony can be forgiving, it wouldn't hurt us to be the same. Burl Ives was a major figure in American folk music and a real force in setting the stage early on for the revival of interest in folk music in the U. S.

P. P. S. The kids in the photos look happy to be with grandpa, and grandpa seems to be pretty tickled with them. Hated children? Unlikely.