I heard Burl Ives on my grandparents' ten-inch records (we had three of them) and Bob Atcher and Terry Gylkenson(sp?) long before I ever heard of The Weavers or Pete Seeger or The New Lost City Ramblers. I heard Burl Ives and the others as a child of two in 1960 and probably knew all of the songs by age eight. Susan Reed was another early singer we had records of -- on Decca, I think, not Elektra, a great thick black record with a green label -- no, not Decca, Columbia: Songs of the Auvergne with "folk songs" on the other side.

I think maybe your folks had to be a bit red for you to hear The Weavers and Seeger -- or was that an East Coast thing?

The Kingston Trio came way later and were not an improvement in my humble opinion. But I don't know who was influencing other people in 1960 or before.