Thanks Allan, I knew it was there somewhere. I won't bother to read my old post, so I might be redundant. I loved the music of the Kingston Trio as soon as I heard it and I immediately wanted to learn guitar. I started on my brother's Gibson Les Paul (electric). I lobbied strongly for a guitar for Christmas and was blessed with one.

I sang and sang and played and played all through high school. This was just prior to the Beatle's breakthrough. Dick Cerri had a folk music show on WAVA in Arlington, Va., I think it was Sunday night. I lobbied for a tape recorder (reel to reel in those days) and "the family" received one next Christmas. We could barely receive WAVA, but I recorded tons of the shows and would listen to them and try to learn the songs.

I borrowed every book the local library had that had "folk music" in it.

I am not sure folk is the only music for serious musicians. To me, it is the music of the people and is accessible to most anyone with a modicum of ability and is very tolerant of those with less than that. The songs, the traditional ones, have been burnished and polished until they roll easily out of the mouth without the hard, sharp edges of new songs. They move towards simplicity through the folk process.

And the first LP I bought was that Tom Rush record spoken about above. I remember it listed all these "blue collar" jobs Tom had had. Took me years to realize they were probably all "summer jobs" not careers.

I'm a bit of an outlier here since I do like some of the current singer/songwriters, but I have noticed that I tend to stick with the "simpler" ones and I am not attracted to singing diaries.

But I have listened to a wide variety of music long enough to appreciate traditional music and I dearly love the blues although they don't always love me back.

Roger in Baltimore