I actually heard a wide range of music at my mother's knee. Did ma have a strange physiology involving a singing knee? No, just a gramophone like everyone else! What was perhaps different was the wide range of music she liked: 78s of songs in Scots Gaelic, Robin Hall & Jimmy Macgregor, Dixieland jazz, classical, watching the White Heather Club on TV, some pop music, etc.

As a six-year old child, we had communal singing at school - I remember loving "Rio Grande", although of course I was much too young to realise that it was somewhat bizarre for a bunch of kids with unbroken voices to be singing a sea shanty.

At my next school, I was chosen as a chorister, which got me into singing harmonies. Meanwhile, I was listening to the pop of the day - Little Eva's 'The Locomotion', Del Shannon's 'Runaway', Cliff Richard. The school, concerned about the predominance of pop music in our taste, did try to get us interested in classical music, but, as this involved sitting in an un- or barely-heated gym in the freezing depths of winter listening to an under-powered and tinny gramophone, this was a complete failure.

Then at my next school The Beatles! And someone had 'The Paul Simon Songbook' LP! And I was still a chorister; we sung Handel's oratario "Israel In Egypt" in Winchester Cathedral. My brothers gave me the first, I think, Peter, Paul, & Mary LP (which was later stolen by someone at that same school - I know exactly who it was, and it wasn't his only dishonesty either). Meanwhile, there was a popped-up version of the theme from Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in the charts, so I asked a friend who liked classical to put on his recording of the real thing, and that got me deeply into classical - favourite composers: Beethoven, Tchaiko, Sibelius. Meanwhile Dylan, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, and Hendrix all seemed to come along more or less together. At this school, there was this narrow-minded thing, you were supposed to like either The Beatles, or The Stones, but not both, but I always thought that was absurd, and openly and defiantly defended my right to like both, which acquired me a reputation for having a wide taste in music. Then The Dubliners hit the charts, and I was utterly hooked.

> From: Elmore
>
> 1.Someone loaned me the first Joan Baez album.

Yes. When I was just about old enough to hang about with and be tolerated for a while by my brothers who were five or six years older than me, I must have been about twelve or thirteen, we all sat at a friend's house listening to that, and I absolutely loved it. What a wonderful singer she was in those days! Got both those LPs as soon as I could. Got the CDs now, and still rate both albums highly.

> From: GUEST,Ruth in Cheshire
>
> 2) Silly Sisters, Maddy Prior/June Tabor, approx 1987/88

I think you mean 1977/8? I know because at the time I was working out my pre-agricultural college year's experience on a farm in Essex, and heard tracks from the album on local radio - next weekend I bought it. Now I have the CD, and it remains one of the best folk albums I have ever heard.

Along the way I've also acquired a taste for Planxty, Ossian, Osibisa, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Santana, pibroch, flamenco, trad and some other forms of jazz, classical guitar (particularly Spanish and Latin American), etc, etc.

So, really I was steeped in all sorts of music, including folk, from a very early age, there was no actual epiphany as such, but many, many, great experiences along the way. My biggest regret is that neither of my parents actually played an instrument, which would have got me off to an earlier and better start playing.