Thanks for your kind comments.

I got back to NYC after 2 weeks in Ireland and England last night. It was great... so was returning home. It was really nice to make many new friends and meet many old ones. Bob Conroy comes in tomorrow. We're singing together on Sunday and I'm sure he'll appreciate your words very much.

The commercialization of folk music wasn't really strong in 1961 when I came to NYC. Only a few years later, pop singers, jazz singers and opera singers were making albums with titles like "My Kind of Folk Songs." Any actor who could carry a tune and would listen to his manager was instantly a folk singer. Some did World Tour type albums with a song each from 10 or 12 cultures. Party pieces with theatrics aside and within my own experience, I think it is in the mid-60's when the importance of performance first tried to overtake the importance of the song in folk music.

I've been spending a lot of time lately listening to 1940's field recordings of songs from New England. One interesting phenomenon from the lumber camps is that singers in the shanties (think "bothies" as in Scotland or "bunkhouses" as in Western ranches), tried to sing songs exactly as the singers from whom they were learning them. Therefore, you hear French-Canadians singing with brogues, etc.

Just one more observation because I'm treading on thin ice joining in on this thread at all; I should just say "thanks" and shut up really! In many places, people pay for fiddle, guitar, harmonica and even bodhran lessons. They will also get voice lessons to learn how to breathe and to focus from the right part of the anatomy, etc. However, the overwealming majority are simply happy buying a CD of a well known singer and learning their songs that way.

All the best,
Dan