I'm pretty sure that the claims the John K. and Peggy S. use song sheets cannot be substantiated from the many times that I have seen both. With the high energy that John puts into his performance, it is doubtful that he would be still enough to read whilst performing.

As for the Coppers, well as has been pointed out that the book is part of the act - the fact that Bob's father Jim wrote the words of his songs down in an old ledger book and that was part of the the family's story. When I first heard them - nearly 50 years ago - they were using Jim's actial book. Later, they used photocopies of the original in see-through plastic sheets in a clip-file. In recent years, it has been the Copper Family song book designed and produced by Jon Dudley. Unlike the earlier versions, Jon's printed song book was the first to have the musical stave of each song noted, but, Matt, none of the Coppers can sight-read music.