I've even been told by well-meaning folks that I'm singing one of my own songs wrong, because they heard someone else cover it and they sang it differently. I suppose it would be flattering if one of my songs were collected in a later edition of the Blue Book but I prefer what I get back from more contemporary folk-processing. Sometimes there's even an improvement!

I do remember a circle in Portland-West, a few years back, that appeared very confused when I led "West Indies Blues" and no one could find it in the book. Well, they just had never met Ella Robinson Madison, nor my mother who learned the song from her. And there are still some songs that are "wild" like that, lurking in the shadows of the singing circle.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble