Born in Jasper County, Illinois, he learned a huge number of songs from his grandmother and when, at the age of four, he sang the entire "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor," someone paid him 50¢. This made a bit of an impression on his young mind.

Beg, borrow, or steal a copy of his autobiography (actually written when he was not that old), Wayfaring Stranger. It's been some time since I read it, but one thing he wrote made a particular impression on me.

People kept telling him that he had a good singing voice (light tenor) and that he should train it. He went to New York and studied voice at a music conservatory. Not Juilliard, but he was sharing digs with a number of other music students, some of who were going to Juilliard.

He was often homesick, so he would pull out his guitar and sing to himself, songs that he'd learned from his grandmother as he was growing up (some 250 songs and ballads, he estimated) and other songs he'd picked up in his ramblings. Some of his snootier roomies would often make fun of his "homespun" songs. So one Sunday afternoon, he took his guitar and went to a nearby park (maybe Central Park, but I don't remember), sat on a park bench, and sang for himself and a small assembly of pigeons and squirrels. People walking by stopped to listen. It wasn't long before he had a fairly large crowd standing around or sitting cross-legged on the grass. He suddenly realized that he had wound up giving an impromptu concert. When he finished, people talked to him and told him how much they liked what they had heard.

He thought long and hard about that afternoon in the park. "Why," he eventually asked himself, "am I spending so much time, money, and effort learning German lieder and other art songs, songs that are in foreign languages and are otherwise foreign to me when I already have a big repertoire of songs that I really love to sing? What am I doing here!??"

And the rest is history.

See if you can find a copy of his book. It's a good read!

Don Firth