I can agree with you on that, Larry. During the early 1960s, there were a number of coffee houses here in Seattle that offered folk music as entertainment, and with the advent of the various popular "folk" groups such as the Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary, the New Christy Minstrels, and of course solo singers such as Bob Gibson and Joan Baez, there were kids crawling out of the woodwork, teaching themselves enough guitar chords to get by, and learning songs off records. Some of them landed jobs in the coffee houses, and I'm afraid I have to say that the vast majority of them were pretty gawdawful. Most of them vanished from sight when the Beatles came along, the "British Invasion" started, and folk music was no longer pop music's "flavor of the month." But a few stuck around, learned what folk music was about, and got pretty good.

The big problem was that all too many of them didn't have a clue as to what they were singing about. They'd learned it from a record, and if they knew anything about the song at all, it was what they got off the liner notes—if any.

I had taken some voice lessons before I became interested in folk music. And when I decided I wanted to make a career of being a modern-day minstrel, I took more singing lessons—not to sound like an opera singer, but to be able to use my voice without doing the kind of damage to it that I knew could happen if you abuse your voice.

One of my teachers asked me to bring my guitar to the lessons, and after going through the routine of vocal exercises and voice technique, he would have me sing whatever song I was learning at the time. He would often stop me and ask, "What does that line mean?" Now, he knew what it meant, but he just wanted to make sure that I knew what it meant and wasn't just singing it by rote.

This got me into really researching the background of any song I sang, and making certain that I understood what it was all about. And could put that across to my audiences. And I think I think I learned how to do that pretty well.

Not that I'm so flamin' brilliant, I just had some good teachers along the line.

This is one of the reasons that I recommend that those interested in singing folk songs seriously don't shy away from taking a few lessons. It won't make them sound like an opera singer (I know a lot of aspiring opera singers who wish it was that easy, but it bloody-well isn't). They can teach you how to keep your singing voice healthy, AND you can never tell what other good things you might learn from a good teacher—such as, "What does that line mean?"

Don Firth