Don Firth got onto the planet a little bit ahead of me, but I remember, during the late 1940's, hearing Burl Ives, The Weavers and Josh White, among others, on radio broadcasts. Locally, in my part of California's San Joaquin Valley, a lot of the music came from Dust Bowl transplants - John Steinbeck's "Okies" and others, primarily from the mid south and southwest.

A lot of it, even though it came from singers who were "country," or "hillbilly" or "western swing" artists, had roots in folk music of the Appalachians and the rural south. People like Merle Travis were very influential at the time, writing songs which, while not purely "folk," were inspired by their forbears' real life experiences. The best known examples would be songs like "Dark as a Dungeon." The dry, often dark humor, the ironic and often poignant lyrics reflected their own unique approach to "hard times." I did not learn a lot of songs from this genre, but I certainly developed a respect for those who "lived" them, and a sense of what their lives must have been like. In the end, I guess that is what "folk music" is really all about; the process of sharing one's unique reality across generations.