Brian Peters: Because I've been arguing that only a tiny minority of people know even one verse of 'Johnny B. Goode', a song that's only 60-odd years old and which many of us have heard many times over on radio or TV ads.

On the other hand, there are multitudes of people who know all the verses of a song like "Hotel California" which is over 40 years old. Not only know the lyrics, but can play it, in several guitar parts, and also often add their own improvisations. Here in Sakhalin (Russian Far East) I started the 7th-fret intro in an informal singaround in a pub last Sunday and after one bar another guitarist was finger-picking the open-string chord sequence while a 3rd was strumming the same. At least a dozen people, mostly Russians, joined in with the vocals and Grisha (the finger picker) did some nice improvisation around the theme at the end.

I've seen the same happen at several open mics in England. At one in Axminster we had 6 guitars playing various parts and improvisations, and 3 female vocalists in their early 20s singing it (generation transfer).

So maybe "Johnny B Goode" is a poor choice as a "possibility"?


Those people in the 19th century and before knew and loved their songs well enough to pass them on to their kids. How many parents today are singing their children to sleep with 'Johnny B. Goode', 'Yellow Submarine' or any of the other usual candidates for 'modern folk songs'?

Not "singing them to sleep" but I'd suggest, for certain songs, a lot more than you'd think are passed on. OK, "Hotel California" may be over-done, but it's certainly been passed down at least one generation. As have songs like "Wish You Were Here"....again, something I can start in almost any "open" pub session and have 20-somethings join in with both the vocals and the guitar parts. Others in the frame would include "Streets of London", "Mr Tambourine Man" (plus several other Dylan songs), some Crosby Stills Nash and Young songs etc. I've heard several under-25s doing Bowie's "Space Oddity" recently...usually with sections of the (predominantly young) audience joining in, and knowing all the words.

And "new" songs in the "folk idiom, such as Dirty Old Town, Fiddler's Green, etc, are sung widely (often by people who believe they're "trad", and with changed words...eg most people sing "gasworks wall" rather than "gasworks croft").

So no, I don't believe "Johnny B. Goode" will ever become "trad", but I can imagine many other "pop" songs of the last 50 years still being sung and passed down through generations a hundred years from now.