Trust me Harvey, it isn't me making the stricture! We've had so damn many discussions about this subject here and it always seems to me that trying to make some hard and fast rule is ridiculous. The profit thing has always bothered me because it rules out some slob writing a song that he likes and all of a sudden it gets popular and eventually enters the time when it can be considered folk. Because he made a profit it ain't folk?

Time is the real test of course, but talking about the rest of it gets really gray. Woody made money and eventually most of his stuff has or will make the folk list. But when the talk is of modern songwriters, it seems that there is some odd line somewhere. Paxton is a songwriter and a folkie and though he made money, it's not as much as some like Dylan who seems to have gone over the $$$line limit. I have never gotten a handle on the whole $$$ thing excert to say that the navel-gazing stuff seems to always make the non-folk list, more because it's too personal to the writer and less for the profit.

Somewhere Bill D. had a really neat kind of breakdown that made a lot of sense as far as what is folk, what is gray but probably will be folk, and several other categories.....It was as rational an explanation as I ever read around here and of course I can't find it.

Spaw