Incredibobble! I'd never heard of The Legendaires until this thread. And it's not as if I was living in a cave during that time. I was out performing in all kinds of venues.

But I guess I was traveling in different circles. . . .

The "embarrassing mistakes" of that era were not made by everyone. What the Legendaires were doing was actually a someone exaggerated idea of what some—not all—people thought folk music was all about. But this was promulgated by the commercial interests and groups like the Legendaires, and many others, were more interested in commercial success than they were in the music itself. Did they really know any traditional folk songs?

In the meantime, there was a substantial "underground," you might say, who were genuinely interested in traditional folk songs, and in singing songs they learned from books by the Lomaxes, Sandburg, Sharp, and other collectors, and from field recordings or from singers who had, in turn, learned the songs they sang from field recordings. Were these folks interested in commercial success? Oh, yes! BUT—not to the extent of corrupting the songs by "prettying them up" or using them merely as vehicles for cheap jokes (which groups like the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters often did).

At the time, there were people who recognized the $hallowne$$ of performers like the Legendaires and the material they performed for what they really represented. Cranking the money machine.

This is not to say that they were not good singings and musicians. But trying to characterize what they did as "folk songs" was just plain phony, not to mention deliberately deceptive.

Don Firth