Hi, Alice - interestingly, my Dover reprint copy of "American Ballads and Folk Songs" by John and Alan Lomax, has 625 pages, just about the same as your more recent book Mine has a 1934 copyright, and "Folk Song USA" was first published in 1947. Seems that all three are different, but all three have the same general format and the rich background information.
After our previous discussion of "Rise Up Singing," I had some correspondence with editor Peter Blood about the upcoming second volume of RUS. He's heard the issues we discussed, and he said the book wasn't intended to be used as a "hymnal." They expected it to be just a reference book. I think we concluded in our last discussion that it really isn't the RUS book that's bad - it's the way some people use it.
Our song circle uses RUS, but I like to think we don't usually go overboard with it. I admit that sometimes I get bugged when people are hesitant when I lead songs MY way, instead of what's in the book. Still and all, the book works pretty well for us - and there are a few of us in the group who constantly push to introduce new songs to keep things fresh.
That's part of the reason I like to hang out here - I've learned a lot of new material.
-Joe Offer-