The first singers of folk songs I ever heard of--equivalent, in my mind, to the Gods of Mount Olympus--were such people as Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Jean Ritchie, Pete Seeger, Josh White, Leadbelly, Susan Reed, Cynthia Gooding, Theodore Bikel. . . .

Somehow, Jean, the word "obscure" never entered my mind.

There are lots of people out there. For example, if anyone is into genuine cowboy songs, check out Slim Critchlow. I heard him at one of the Berkeley Folk Festivals in the early Sixties. He sang a lot of the old, sentimental cowboy ballads, and toward the end of his program, he tossed in The Cowboy Fireman. He delivered it in the same style as the rest of the songs he sang, and it wasn't until he reached the next-to-last verse that the audience realized that it was a colossal leg-pull. Had us rolling in the aisles.

Now, if you want really obscure (:-O

ME!!! ME!!!

(One cut on a 12" LP handed out at the UN Pavilion during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, and three light-years of open-reel tape in a box in my closet.) Oh, well. . . . (sigh).

Don Firth