Conrad, the "lefty hippie folk singer" is a stereotype that never really existed, except in the minds of people who hadn't a clue as to what was really going on in the world. I was there, and I know.

True, there were the so-called "flower children," and the "If you go to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" things, but this didn't really last all that long, and it was not especially an aspect of the folk music revival. And Pete Seeger and the Smothers Brothers didn't have anything to do with that—except in the simple minds of people who like to stuff several disparate factors that they feel characterize an era into one sack, so they can reduce them to proportions that they can comprehend.

I was (am) a singer of folk songs. I got interested in folk music a couple of years before you were born, and by the time you were born, I was starting to get paid for singing engagements. Many of these were regular, long-term engagements in clubs and coffeehouses.

Ah, coffeehouses! Those infamous hippie hangouts!

Well, Conrad, let me clue you in. Most of the people I saw in coffeehouses were university students. They tended to dress casually, but not sloppily. Most of them (including me and the other singers) got regular haircuts and were clean-shaven. In some of the coffeehouses, especially late in the evening, it was not unusual to see a few patrons there wearing tuxedos and formal gowns. They were dropping in after attending an opera, a symphony, or a ballet.

Not exactly the stereotyped "lefty hippie folkie" hangouts that you, and a lot of other people who were never actually there, are picturing in your mind. No, Conrad, the image you have of that era bears very little relationship to what was actually going on at the time. We weren't all standing around holding hands, dancing the hora, and singing "Kumbaya," and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." Nor were we all singing labor songs and anti-war songs.

If you want to get an idea of the kind of songs that were being sung, take a look at books like Carl Sandburg's American Songbag or Lomax's Folk Song U. S. A. or Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Or listen to the early records of Burl Ives, Susan Reed, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Ed McCurdy, Cynthia Gooding, and Joan Baez (when she was singing ballads). Later, some of the younger singers were learning songs from records by The Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary, and the more commercial folk groups.

Remember, I was there, saw it, heard it, participated in it.

And as I have said several times here, I have heard Pete Seeger live, in concert, several times, and out of, maybe, thirty or more songs, some three or four at most might be what one would call "songs of social protest." And most often those would be historical in nature (pre-Civil War anti-slavery song or a union organizing song from the 1920s or 1930s).

And I remember watching the Smothers Brothers television show. I don't recall them doing much, if any, in the way of political material. I do recall the brouhaha over CBS trying to censor Pete Seeger's singing of "Waste Deep in the Big Muddy," which your whole thesis seems to be based on.

You're tilting at windmills, Conrad. And remember, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, the original tilter at windmills, was delusional.

Don Firth