Richard Dyer-Bennet has long been a favorite singer of mine and one of the first singers of folk songs and ballads that I heard of. A friend of mine back in 1950 had an album of his (three 12" 78s). And when I first became interested in singing folk songs back in 1952 (girl friend at the time was busily teaching herself to play the guitar and learning folk songs from a small paperback—"A Treasury of Folk Songs" compiled by John and Sylvia Kolb, Bantam Books, 35¢). I chugged down to Campus Music and Gallery and bought some records to learn songs from. Burl Ives, Susan Reed, and Richard Dyer-Bennet.

Dyer-Bennet was born in England, but his family moved to Canada when he was a youngster, then to Germany for a couple of years where his mother taught, then to Berkeley, California. While in Germany, he began playing the guitar and learning German folk songs and Christmas carols from fellow students.

In Berkeley, at the age of twenty, he took his guitar to a Christmas party and sang several songs. Voice teacher Gertrude Wheeler Beckman took him aside and told him that his light tenor had the makings of a good "minstrel's voice," and offered to teach him. During his studies with her, she told him about the Swedish minstrel, Sven Scholander. He scraped his nickels together and made a pilgrimage to Stockholm, where he met Scholander, now retired.

The eagerness of the young man from the United States prompted him to take his lute down from the wall and sing for Dyer-Bennet. That cinched it in Dyer-Bennet's mind. He spent six weeks visiting Scholander, talking with him, and listening to him sing, then Scholander gave him a folio of about a hundred of his songs. Dyer-Bennet returned to the U. S. thoroughly energized.

He resumed his voice lessons with Gertrude Wheeler Beckman and took classical guitar lessons from Cuban guitarist Rey de la Torre. Initially he played a Swedish lute like Scholander's (tuned like a guitar, six strings on the neck with a sort of "outrigger'' strung with four or five bass strings), but soon retired it in favor of a classical guitar.

After singing in night clubs (along with Burl Ives) and giving solo concerts and recitals here and there, he hired New York's Town Hall and sang a concert there. The great impresario Sol Hurok, ever on the lookout for new, fresh talent, was in the audience, went backstage during intermission, and signed Dyer-Bennet on the spot.

Bingo!!

I had the good fortune to meet Richard Dyer-Bennet on a couple of occasions. First in Bellingham, 90 miles north of Seattle, when he sang an assembly at the college there in 1957. I drove up to hear him. I talked to him backstage after the assembly, told him what I was doing—taking singing lessons and classic guitar lessons from good teachers, studying music theory at the U. of Washington, and learning songs and their backgrounds.

"Well," he said, "there's not much I can tell you, other than to keep doing what you're doing."

He was very personable, friendly, and helpful.

We met and talked again during the time he was in Seattle doing three concerts during the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. While he was here, he joined a bunch of us local singers in one of the Sunday afternoon concerts at the United Nations Pavilion.

Although he's not everybody's cup of tea, I admire Dyer-Bennet's approach. Minstrel rather than folk singer. Although I emulate his approach, I do not imitate him.   Among other things, I couldn't. He's a light tenor. I'm a bass-baritone (think Bryn Terfel—sort of. . . .)

Point worth pondering: Although the bulk of his repertoire consisted of folk songs and ballads, Dyer-Bennet did not limit himself to them. If he liked a song, he sang it. He also wrote a few songs himself. But he did not insist on calling them "folk songs. . . ."

The art of the minstrel:

Scottish ballad.

Poem Dyer-Bennet set to music.

Don Firth