No, Steve, I'm not going by the 1954 definition. I'm going by the definition that people like the Lomaxes, Carl Sandberg, and Cecil Sharp used when they were out collecting songs.

As I just said, you can call something an antique, but only age and use makes a genuine antique. I don't think Tom Paxton, Townes Van Zandt, and other writers of folk-like songs tried to pass them off as folk songs. They knew better.

If it's a good song and other people want to learn it and sing it, it may very well become a folk song in time, but to claim it's a folk song when the ink is still wet is trying to give it a status that it doesn't yet deserve.

Phony. And a bit dishonest.

Don Firth