I think some people want to use the word "folk" as some sort of stamp of respectability, like the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval." The songwriter seeks immediate acceptance of his or her work by labeling it a "folk song," attempting to give it an illusion of longevity and respectability, even if it was written only last week and the songwriter is the only person who sings it (or wants to). Likewise, someone who performs in folk venues might feel his or her status among their peers will be diminish if they like to sing songs that are patently not traditional. They try to justify what they want to sing (and also keep their place in a specifically folk venue) by insisting through convoluted reasoning that what they sing are folk songs.

If the Kingston Trio recorded "They Call the Wind Mariah," from the Broadway musical, "Paint Your Wagon," or the Brothers Four recorded "Try to Remember," from the off-Broadway musical, "The Fantasticks," that did not make them folk songs. When singing in coffeehouses in the early 1960s, I got requests for these and similar songs from people who didn't know where they came from and assumed they were folk songs because they had heard them sung by nominally folk groups. I sang them. But I told the audience where the songs came from. I didn't fell that I had to justify the fact that I was willing to sing them by insisting that they were "folk songs."

That didn't mean that they weren't good songs. They were just not folk songs. Besides, if they liked those, they might want to listen to some of the other songs in the musicals.

Don Firth