I had been thumping around on my recently purchased $9.95 plywood guitar for a couple of months, trying to work out an accompaniment for "Greensleeves" from Richard Dyer-Bennet's folio of 20 songs, and learning a couple of songs from a combination of Burl Ives' paperback song book and a couple of his records, and so far, I had taken about a month's guitar lessons from Walt Robertson, when a "hootenanny" was declared for one Saturday night at The Chalet restaurant. At the time, a "hootenanny" was an open party, bring your guitar, banjo, Swiss bells, whatever, and we'll sing, individually and all together, for as long as we hold out or until the cops come. This was sometime in early 1953.

I knew one song that I felt sure of. "The Fox," learned from a Burl Ives record. I was waiting my opportunity to jump in when someone shouted out, "Hey, Walt, sing 'The Fox!'" Walt did. I had not yet learned the chords for the key he played it in. D. I did it in C. So I couldn't even play along.

A few months later, there was a big city-wide hobby fair in Seattle, and the newly organized Pacific Northwest Folklore Society was there. We were asked to do something on the performance stage. Walt sang "John Henry" accompanying himself on his monster 12-string, Bob Nelson (16 years old – had just met him the day before) sang "Casey Jones," and I sang "High Barbaree."

As far as I can remember, that was the first time I sang in front of an audience larger than a couple dozen people.

Some ten years later, summer of 1963, in front of the Horiuchi mural at the Seattle Center, I sang to an outdoor crowd estimated at 6,000 people. I had a somewhat pricier Fernandez flamenco guitar by then (hand-made in Madrid), and quite a bit more performing experience.

Don Firth