All good recommendations. I'm currently reading Rainbow Quest.

As early as the mid-1940s and very early 1950s, there were small groups of folk music enthusiasts here and there all over the country, probably most of them around college campuses. I recall as a teen-ager listening to Burl Ives on the radio early Sunday afternoons and enjoying the songs he sang and the stories he told.

And in Seattle in the very early forties, there was a fellow named Ivar Haglund who also had a radio program on Sunday mornings, doing essentially the same thing as Burl Ives, but singing songs and telling stories about early settlers in the Pacific Northwest. Haglund ran a small aquarium on the Seattle waterfront, opened a take-out seafood bar nearby, and eventually opened a full-service seafood restaurant, taking the name of the place from the last line of "The Old Settler's Song" which he used as the theme song of his radio show—"Acres of Clams." He opened several other restaurants, worked very hard at becoming a "local character," and made a pile of money in the process.

My interest developed in 1951 while I was going with a girl who was very much into learning songs from books by Sandburg and the Lomaxes and teaching herself to play the guitar. Her initial interest was ignited by hearing Walt Roberson sing at a party.

Walt, in turn, was in his mid-twenties and fresh back from Haverford College, and he (I think) had got turned on by attending the Swarthmore Folk Festivals in the late 1940s, where he heard people like Richard Dyer-Bennet, Woody Guthrie, John Jacob Niles, miscellaneous Lomaxes, Josh White, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. Not a bad intro!! [More on Walt here.]

So, in the early 1950s, there was a small (maybe a dozen people), but very enthusiastic group around here playing guitars, banjos, miscellaneous other instruments, and singing folk songs and ballads, along with several dozen aficionados who showed up when any of us sang anywhere. Early on, one of these singers was Sandy Paton, who subsequently picked up his guitar, hung out his thumb, and headed East.

There was also a very avid and active group at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. There was a fair amount of cross-fertilization between Seattle and the Reed College group.

All this was while the members of the Kingston Trio were still trying to figure out which way their guitars and banjos were supposed to point. And if you mentioned you were interested in folk music, most people thought you were talking about Country and Western or "Modern Western Swing," i.e., Sons of the Pioneers, "Grand Ole Opry," and such.

In Baby, Let Me Follow You Down, there is one of these "proportional maps" showing centers of interest in folk music around the country. New York, Boston/Cambridge, Berkeley, and a few other areas dominate the map, but the Seattle area isn't even represented. This doesn't reflect reality because, although the rest of the country may not have been aware of it, there was a very active and rapidly growing group of folk music enthusiasts up in the northwest corner of the country, and some of us were actually beginning to making a modest living from performing. In the mid-1950s, there was a series of arts festivals in the University District (The East 42nd Street Arts Festival—streets blocked off, outdoor exhibits, folk dancing, the Keith Pipe Band, lots of stuff good stuff) that included several concerts by local folk singers.

Noting this omission, some years ago I started an attempt to write a history of the folk music scene in the Seattle area, but very quickly realized that there was so much that went on here that I would be like the blind man groping his way around an elephant and trying to figure out what the heck it was! So I backed off a bit and started working on a book of my own experiences and personal reminiscences. I've got about 120,000 words written so far and I've got a way to go yet! That's some fairly serious wordage, and it's going to take some judicious editing to get it manageable, keep the good stuff, and cut it down to size.

I believe that John Ross (a writer by profession) once mentioned that he is working on a history of folk music in this area. Excellent! No conflict between what we are doing because what I'm writing is from a fairly personal viewpoint, and I think John's is probably more far-reaching and academic. John, if there's anything I can do to help (info and such, who did what, etc.), I'd be more than happy to.

Don Firth