Many modern songwriters who fit into the folk tradition write about true history, and these are the kinds of songs I especially like to hear and write. Most of the information that I use comes from books of oral history - letters, diaries, memoirs, or interviews - that have been collected and published by historians.

What I want to know is: are there many folkish songwriters who are out there doing the interviews or rooting through the letters themselves, rather than using information collected by an historian? If so, who are they?

There have been a few times that I've used unpublished oral history as a basis for my songs - my aunt's memoirs of my grandmother, and my friend's account of her grandfather's stories. And once, after hearing one of my historical songs, a Mudcatter sent me some old family letters which included an eyewitness account of Lincoln's funeral, and a description of a meal with General LaFayette (though I haven't done anything with them yet). So certainly you can get some of this stuff through connections and word of mouth. But I'm curious about the possibility of looking for it in a more systematic way, and learning about the methods used by historians to uncover new knowledge. How do I locate the strangers that have interesting boxes of letters in the attic, and how do I get them to lend them to me?

Thanks, Marion