John, that's great! I figured that there was a huge stock of stuff from Folklife, and I've often wondered if anything was being done with it.

I don't think I have any recordings or tapes from Folklife, although I have performed there a number of times, but I do have a couple of boxes of tapes from hoots, parties, and informal songfests from the late Fifties and early Sixties--maybe even a concert or two. There is some pretty interesting stuff on these tapes, and some very interesting people.

The problem at the moment is: 1) much of it is in storage and I'm unable to get at it right now; and 2) although I have a fairly good idea of what's on some of these tapes, many of them were given to me unlabelled (!!), so I need to go through them and see what I've got. Somewhere among them (I hope!) is tape that I made in a recording studio in 1959.

I just recently purchased a CD-RW drive for my computer, and thanks to the good offices of Bob (Deckman) Nelson and the generosity of Jo Harms, I have a good quality functional open-reel tape recorder. My plan is to first learn how, and then transfer all this stuff to CDs, hopefully before the tapes all crumble away.

As soon as I find out what I have, you'd be most welcome to make use of any of it that would be of interest. I just put your e-mail address in my address book. Mine is -- donfbarbarap@earthlink.net.

Don Firth