When Folk-Legacy was started, there were a number of labels producing recordings of African-American artists, specializing in the genre and well versed in its history, but very few offering field recordings of Anglo-American traditional singers. We had spent a good bit of our lives learning something about the Anglo-American song/ballad tradition to which we, personally, were drawn, but knew almost nothing about, say, blues.

As we went along, our audience developed among those who shared our interest in the Anglo-Scots-Irish-American material and the contemporary material that reflected its style. Over the years, we have continued to focus on the subject in which we feel more informed. I have done very little field collecting in African-American communities and quite a lot in Appalachia, New England, the Ozarks, the Maritime Provinces, etc. As I find the funds to produce more compilations from my field recordings, the African-Americans I have recorded will be included, of course, as Dave thompson was on Ballads and Songs of Tradition.

The music we have recorded has absolutely nothing to do with our political credentials, with our work for civil rights, with the fact that Julian Bond, Sam Griffin, and others in the movement chose to stay at our home when they were in our area to raise money for the movement, or the fact that my political activity has long kept me cheerfully and proudly on the Radical Right's shit list.

It is clear to me that "Fishy Waters" has failed to inform him/herself regarding our back catalog or to keep up with the number of African-American recordings offered on our web site. I have chosen to stay away from subjects about which I realize I know very little. I suggest that "Fishy Waters" might well do the same.

A somewhat angry Sandy