My recollection is that in the early 1960s there were guys who looked like The Kingston Trio or Limelighters who had a more conservative repetoire. I can't remember the names because I wasn't interested.

You do hear expressions of ambition or middle class desire in traditional song, of course, e.g. in "The Girl I Left Behind" there are these lines...

The first time I left Ireland, for Scotland I was bound
And sailing up to Glasgow we viewed that pleasant town
Where trade and money were plentiful and the girls to me proved kind
But me heart beat sore for Erin's shore and the girl I left behind.

The Fisher Family LP on Topic had on it a song about the stock market or, properly, the South Sea bubble... interesting, I think, and a GREAT melody.

Perhaps well-to-do people want others to play music for them. I used to sing with a guy who played pipes. Some time later it was said to me that he had become "Malcolm Forbes personal piper." One day I was at a European-American Chamber of Commerce talk by one of the Forbes brothers (not Steve, but the one who's Publisher of American History magazine). This Forbes was a fairly warm speaker so, at the recption which followed, I thought I'd ask about my friend of old.

"I believe we have a friend in common," I said to him and gave the piper's name. "Oh, yes, he used to do some work for us," said Forbes, letting me know that (despite all their Scots hype) pipers were still employees in the Forbes Castle.

All the best,
Dan