GUEST,150613, that's what I have said a couple of times up-thread. For those who want to sing out of books, there is nothing to stop them from getting together and doing so.

But the book-singers keep showing up at open mikes and sessions where it is already established that one knows a song from memory and can sing it straight to the audience without the book intervening.

That's what was assumed when I first began singing folk songs and ballads in the early 1950a and that's the way everybody did it.

Until sometime in the late 1970s and early 80s when some newcomers started showing up with armloads of books.

I like to sing my songs directly to an audience, without a book intervening. And I don't like it much when someone has to sing out of a book or they don't have anything to sing.

It demonstrates that the singer is not really invested in the song! Knowing a song means a lot more than just having memorized the words and tune.

I can't see Pete Seeger or Joan Baez or Jean Ritchie or Mississippi John Hurt walking out on stage and singing out of a book.

Don Firth