Right, M. It was from those early records that I learned the first songs I learned. The first song, "The Fox." This was in 1952.

Then the next song I took a shot at was "Greensleeves," from a Richard Dyer-Bennet record. I also had Dyer-Bennet's folio of twenty songs with the guitar accompaniments written out. Way to hell and gone beyond me, and I quickly discovered that I couldn't sing it in the same key. So back to the Burl Ives records.

And my copy of A Treasury of Folk Songs, compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb (Bantam Books, 35¢).

Then "The Golden Vanity" from Dyer-Bennet, and back to "The Bold Soldier" from The Burl Ives Song Book, followed by "High Barbaree" from the same source.

Lotsa good songs!!

I eventually got "Greensleeves," but I worked out my own accompaniment for it, as ornate as Dyer-Bennet's, but in a different key. But this was after I had taken some classical guitar lessons.

Burl Ives' records were sort of "basic repertoire" early on. And not just for me.

Don Firth

P. S. I can't really agree with Ives about opera. In my middle teens, a friend of mine (actually, one of my fencing instructors) was smitten with opera, then discovered that he had a pretty nice tenor voice. He decided to take singing lessons. He and I and a couple of others used to listen to recordings of operas, and I decided to take some singing lessons from the same teacher. She diagnosed my voice as a low bass-baritone (frog in a rain barrel). But I developed a real liking for opera, and my wife and I are season ticket holders at Seattle Opera.

If I were to try to sing operatic stuff, I'd really smell at it, but I seem to be able to do folk songs and ballads well enough so that some benighted souls are willing to pay to listen to me, and I love the songs, so. . . .

Wagner is pretty heavy going if you're not familiar with opera to begin with, but rather than "stinks," some of it is bloody magnificent!!

Your mileage may vary. . . .