There is often not that much qualitative difference between an amateur and a professional. I know a number of really fine singers who don't want to be professional singers. They sing strictly for enjoyment (their own and others') and prefer not to be dependent upon their singing for income, wanting to sing when they want to sing, not because they depend on it to pay the rent. But—I don't know that many people, including those who chose to stay amateur, who will refuse payment if someone offers it to them.

When it comes down to it, I'm probably more of a semi-professional.   What drew me into professionalism was being asked in 1959 to do the "Ballads and Books" television series. For which, incidentally, I did NOT receive any pay. A program planner for KCTS-TV had heard me a few times at "hoots" (private parties where friends get together to sing for each other) and actually had to talk me into doing the series. KCTS was an educational station based at the University of Washington, operating on a low budget and using hand-me-down equipment from KING-TV, a local commercial station. Now, it's our local PBS affiliate and with its own studios off campus. But at the time they did not have the money to pay "talent."

People then assumed that, since I had done a television series, I was obviously a "professional," so they expected to pay me when I sang somewhere. Such as the coffeehouse "The Place Next Door," which had just opened and was looking for a folk singer to hire. Simply a case of being at the right place at the right time, and being ready when the job was offered.

So—Conrad, there is a damned thin line between amateurs and professions, particularly in the realm of folk music. Your picture of professionals as being greedy elitists trying to limit the field bears no resemblance to anything going on in the real world.

As a greedy, elitist professional singer out merely to exploit folk music for my own selfish enrichment, with the exception in the early Sixties when I was singing regularly in coffeehouses, doing concerts, singing at the Seattle World's Fair and at arts festivals and such, if I had not also been teaching guitar in a music store and giving folk guitar classes in the evenings when I wasn't singing someplace (and how better, Conrad, to spread interest in folk music than to teach others how to do it?), I would not have made a very good living. I managed to squeak by. But—I was able to keep doing what I wanted to do:   sing for and with other people.

With the British Invasion (The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, et al.) and the demise of the popular interest in folk music—and the closing of many coffeehouses, I and many of my greedy, elitist professional compatriots had to take "day jobs." But we continued to get together for "hoots."

But gradually, over the past few decades, folk music seems to be growing. Slowly, perhaps, but growing nevertheless. Folk festivals (free!) all over the country, many new coffeehouses opening (there are more coffeehouses offering folk music as entertainment in Seattle right now than there were in the Sixties!), open mikes, song circles. . . .

Believe it or not, but there is more interest in folk music right now (as opposed to popular folk singing trios, quartets, and other ensembles of the "Mighty Wind" stripe) than there was in the Sixties. And this time, it's growing, not because it's suddenly a popular music fad, but because genuine interest in the songs themselves, and a desire on the part of many to not only preserve them, but sing them.

It will never be more than one corner of the wide world of music available, any more than opera or early music is, but as it is now, it's actually much more stable and healthier than it was during the heyday of groups like The Kingston Trio, The Limeliters, and The New Christy Minstrels.

If it ain't broke—and it ain't!—don't fix it!

Or as a famous man once said:   "You cannot help a child grow by pulling on its head!"

Don Firth

P. S.    ". . . nor do I find professionals telling me I am not good enough. Quite the opposite; the professional musicians I know are very encouraging."

Exactly so, Tootler! I'll never forget sitting on Carol Lee Waite's living room floor at 3:00 o'clock in the morning in 1954, passing a guitar back and forth with Pete Seeger as he showed me guitar licks. Or the time I spent backstage having a long chat with Richard Dyer-Bennet, who as very encouraging. Or both Guy Carwan and Barbara Dane suggesting songs they thought I could do particularly well.

What Conrad keeps saying about professional singers of folk songs reveals how totally ignorant he is about that of which he speaks.