I can hardly add anything of substance to what Howard said just above because he is right on the point.

From my own experience, I had heard Burl Ives on the radio when I was a teenager, and had seen Susan Reed in a movie and had heard a couple of her records, so I was at least aware that there were such things as "folk songs." But it wasn't until I was in college and attended a live informal concert one Saturday evening in a restaurant half a block from the university campus. In about two and half hours of listening to Walt Robertson sing folk songs and ballads (giving occasional brief "program notes" on the songs as he went along), I was totally hooked! I bought a couple of folk song books and a cheap guitar, then buttonholed Walt and asked him to teach me how to play it.

And I am not the only one, by any means. Walt, by his singing, turned a lot of people on to folk music.

And yes, Walt was a professional. He had won a Talent U.S.A. contest a couple of years before, and had a weekly television program, "The Wanderer" on KING-TV, and he was doing concerts around the area. And he had two 78 rpm records out on a local label and later, two records out on Folkways (CLICKY). Rich? Jet-set? Hardly! The television station paid him a small stipend, and he got a percentage of the gate when he sang a concert, and I think he earned about $5.00 in royalites off the records—but he lived in a one-room apartment in an old house that had been turned into small apartments and was referred to by the tenants there as "Cockroach Manor." I think he paid about $25.00 a month rent. And he drove a taxicab during the day—to pay his rent and keep himself eating!

So, Conrad, there is an example of the kind of "elitist, fat-cat, professional singers" you are talking about!

And some years later, when I reached a point where I started singing for people and getting paid for it (and that included television, regular gigs in coffeehouses, and concerts in various venues from house concerts to singing in college auditoriums and the occasional theater or concert hall), if I hadn't also been teaching guitar and working at occasional day jobs (Boeing, Ma Bell, as a technical writer for the Bonneville Power Administration, and as a radio announcer) I would never have been able to make a living. Certainly not by singing alone.

And for every singer like Joan Baez and Theodore Bikel who could and did go from concert to concert by jet and receive substantial pay for their concerts, there were thousands of singers like Walt and me. I can make up a list as long as your leg of professional (people who get paid for what they do) singers of folk songs who are not making a living from their singing alone, and it would include many very well-known names.

And both Walt and I have sung at many of the Northwest Folklife Festivals. Where we sang without pay. As did every singer who came, including many who traveled considerable distances (one young woman from, I believe, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) on their own dime!

The first time I saw and heard Pete Seeger live was in 1954, and since I was a member of the non-profit Pacific Northwest Folklore Society that sponsored the concert, I know for a fact that he was paid $90.00 for the concert. The Wesley House basement auditorium, capacity 90 people, and the admission fee was $1.00! You do the arithmetic! That didn't even pay for his trip, but he came anyway!! And while he was here, he spent a lot of time with us, teaching us things. But not during the concert, because that would not have been appropriate! He did get people singing along on some songs, but they had come to hear him sing, not have him lecture them.

If things are different where you live, Conrad, then I feel sorry for you, and as I suggested before, if you don't like it, either get busy and change things yourself, or move somewhere else.

I know things are just fine where I live. There is a lot of activity, including such things as Bob Nelson (Deckman) teaching classes in schools and libraries about the relationship between folk music and American history, and Stewart Hendrickson's (Stewart) work in sponsoring concerts in coffeehouses and in his own home and putting out a monthly newsletter—and taking no pay for his many efforts (he's a retired college professor).

My suspicion, Conrad, is that you are far more interested in a) bitching, b) being hailed as some sort of messiah, and c) drinking vast quantities of cheap beer than you are in folk music.

Don Firth