Crow Sister, the very core of what got me actively interested in folk music in the first place was the evening I heard Walt Robertson sing an informal concert in a restaurant in Seattle's University District in 1952. The restaurant, named "The Chalet," was about the nearest thing to a coffeehouse that Seattle had at the time.

In about two and a half or three hours, Walt sang a whole variety of songs, but the ones that really grabbed me were the long ballads—the songs that told stories. I don't remember what all ballads Walt sang that night, but Mattie Groves was one of them. Twenty-seven verses.

And I have found that in a coffeehouse set (about 35 or 40 minutes), I can include one of the longer ballads and have the audience hanging on the story, and often, after the set is over, if someone asks me about a particular song in the set, it will be the ballad ("Who wrote that?" Who knows? Perhaps some ancient bard or minstrel. "Where did it come from?" Sometimes from an actual historical incident, sometimes a story that's been around and been retold for centuries.). The same thing has happened after concerts I've done, when I've interspersed three or four ballads in among a lot of shorter, more lyrical songs.

It's been my experience that general audiences find these ballads fascinating, especially if I sing them well; not "hamming them up," but singing them with the same kind of expression I would use if I were telling a story, much as an ancient minstrel would have. After all, they were musical story-tellers.

Where I occasionally encounter someone sighing and rolling their eyes when I start a longer ballad is genereally in a gathering of jaded "folkies." Remember:   just because they have heard it many times before doesn't mean that everybody has. Nor does one hyper-sophisticated yo-yo yawning and looking bored mean that others aren't fascinated by the story and are following it avidly.

Know the story thoroughly. Sing it well. And remember, you're telling a story.

Probably not a good idea to string a whole bunch of them together, though. Any good program needs to be varied.

Sing the songs you like, sing them well, and others will enjoy them also.

Don Firth