Well, my dad loves to tell this story...

Our kindergarten class was tasked with each learning a song to share with our classmates. They all went home and dutifully came back with "You are my sunshine" and "Zip a dee doo dah" and the like. I went home and in my usual independent fashion didn't tell my parents a thing about the assignment (it was *mine* after all!) and combed my their album collection for an exciting song--I almost chose "Long Black Veil" but decided it was too slow, and I nearly went for "Old Dan Tucker" or "Whiskey in the Jar" but I decided against them, for reasons I can't recall now.

So, the first song I performed in public, at the age of 5, (in its entirety because I refused to shut up) was "Frankie and Johnny". My classmates thought it was great. Especially because the teacher was trying to shut me up. Needless to say, I went home with a note for my parents about appropriate music for children, which amused them both tremendously.

But in actual fact, I was brought up on recordings of Burl Ives, Leadbelly, The Weavers, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, New Lost City Ramblers, Pete Seeger and so forth, so those were the songs I knew.

I didn't sing in public again until I was 39, mainly because I was told by my school music teachers that I was hopelessly off key. At 39, after months of getting my courage up, I played at a local open mic and did "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Long Black Veil".

Thanks for recalling the memory!

V