What a great thread! I've just been lurking and reading for the last few days and doing a lot of thinking about whether I have any "Musical Career Regrets." And if so, what are they? Actually, Chris and Jerry's posts just above are so beautifully said that I felt that that was a good note for the thread to end on. But, characteristically, I can't resist sticking in my two bits worth. And I originally intended it to be just two-bits worth, but since the subject is really thought-provoking, I fell into a fit of nostalgia and got on a roll. Sorry for the length of this, and for the self-indulgence, but here it comes.

I don't think I have any regrets, actually. But there are a few things I would have done a lot differently.

Beginning around 1953, I sang at parties and "hoots" in private homes, and a couple of times at house concerts when Walt Robertson took me along and got me to spell him by singing from my repertoire of a dozen or so songs. This was a real learning experience. Then in 1955-56, I spent a chunk of time in a hospital in Denver undergoing physical therapy for the after-effects of polio at the age of two. During my spare time at the hospital there was little for me to do but practice on the guitar and learn songs, and I sang a lot for the other patients, sometimes for groups of 200 or more. By the time I got back to Seattle, I had a fair grasp of the guitar, a good repertoire of songs, and some actual performing experience gained there in the hospital. I had also decided that I wanted to make a career for myself as a singer of folk songs like Burl Ives or Richard Dyer-Bennet. Not too nutty an idea at the time, because this was still pre-Kingston Trio, the folk scare hadn't really started, folk singers were not that common yet, and "professional folk singers" like the aforementioned were considered interesting and unusual and if they were good enough, they could do concerts and make records.

Other than the occasional Rotary Club luncheon or retired (i.e., married) stewardesses reunion, there was no outlet for a singer of folk songs in the Seattle area. No coffeehouses—yet. But since I was back in school, studying music, I felt that the future was still ahead of me. Then in 1959, a friend whose job it was to plan television shows for KCTS Channel 9, the local educational channel, shanghaied me (nervously, but not too reluctantly) into doing a television series called "Ballads and Books." As an aftermath of the television series, I got plenty gigs. At about the same time, the first few coffeehouses began opening in the Seattle area and I was suddenly in demand! And they paid. Not much, but between singing in coffeehouses and giving a few guitar lessons, I was actually making a living at it!

Bob (Deckman) Nelson and I joined forces, formed a duo, and sang three nights a week at "The Place Next Door," one of the nicer coffeehouses. We went over well enough that we were asked to do a number of concerts together. We figured it was a good time for us to make our bid for fame and fortune. So we two barefoot pilgrims, totally clueless, packed up our guitars and headed for the Bay Area where, we had heard, things were really happening. We soon learned that we were too "commercial" for Berkeley (we just sang the best we could; we didn't try to imitate Woody Guthrie) and we were too "ethnic" for San Francisco (we took our music seriously, but what club owners wanted there were "acts," preferably funny—the Limeliters and the Smothers Brothers were just starting at the time, and since they were going over well, all the other clubs wanted clones of those acts). We did sing in a few of the places we'd heard about, but discovered that they were holes compared to Seattle's coffeehouses. And more often than not we got stung—we sang, and when it was time to get paid, the guy who'd hired us couldn't be found. So we spent most of our time in Sausalito where the people were really nice and other singers didn't care about "ethnic" or "commercial" as long as you sang good songs. And we met a wonderful lady, a semi-retired Mexican folk singer named Juanita, who sang beautiful songs at a local pub a couple evenings a week. Seeing we were strangers in a strange land, she advised us, mothered us, and fed us lots of delicious food. When we ran out of money, we bid farewell to some wonderful new friends, turned our backs on the rest, and came home to Seattle. 'Twas a great adventure.

Bob got married shortly thereafter and had to set about making a living. I returned to teaching and coffeehouse singing. For the next five years I sang somewhere almost every Friday and Saturday, sometimes Thursdays and Sundays as well. Mostly coffeehouses, but fairly often concerts. I did about forty concerts altogether, most of them at colleges and universities in and around the Pacific Northwest. I was particularly busy during the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, singing every weekend at the United Nations Pavilion along with many others including Bob, off and on in one of the clubs on "Show Street" at the fair, and a couple of evenings a week in a coffeehouse in the University District. A gal with a big voice, Judy Flenniken, and I did a series of concerts together during the spring of 1963, including one at the Seattle Center Playhouse, sponsored by the UN. I participated in the Seattle Center Hootenannies in the summer of 1963 and traveled a bit with the Seattle Center Hootenanny Tour Group. Bit of a mob-scene, but it gave me an opportunity to sing for some pretty large audiences—6000 or more. No major national breakthroughs, but I was very busy and I was making at least a marginal living at it.

In the mid-Sixties, the character of the whole thing changed. Singer/songwriters were suddenly the "in" thing. If you didn't write your own songs, you were not "socially relevant." And drugs inundated the scene. The back rooms in some of coffeehouses were fog-thick with pot smoke, and a couple of really talented musicians—friends—killed themselves. ODed. My new guitar students no longer wanted to play like Peter Yarrow, they wanted to play like John Lennon. It just wasn't fun anymore. I packed it in and went to work for Boeing.

After reading the book about Bob Gibson that Bob mentioned and a couple of other books (Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu and Baby, Let Me Follow You Down by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney), I'm not so sure I would have wantedto "make it big." Could be that, all in all, I was just damned lucky. But—I did have a helluva good run.

I've worked at a number of jobs since then—draftsman, telephone operator, radio announcer, technical writer…… In the late Seventies and early Eighties I sang a fair amount: at several of the Northwest Folklife Festivals, the Moss Bay Sail and Shantey Festival, several festivals and concerts with John Dwyer and John and Sally Ashford. And a couple of gigs with Bob. Felt good.

In 1990 I fell and broke my "good" leg and that put me in a wheelchair, no longer able to walk with crutches. Then, graceful fellow that I am, in 2000 I did another little fandango and broke the same damned leg again. Now, in addition to being in a wheelchair, my left leg has to stick out in front of me like a bowsprit. Hard to get in and out of a car, so it really limits my mobility—and makes dramatic entrances and exits a bit iffy. Also, it's hard to play anything but a small travel guitar when you're sitting in a wheelchair. The lower bout of a full size guitar and the right wheel of the chair interfere with each other. So if I have any major regrets right now, it's that I'd like to perform at an occasional open mike, festival, or house concert, but it's a real hassle getting anywhere, getting set up, and, as I say, the problem with a full size guitar. No permanent solution yet. But come hell or high water, I'll work out something.

I really enjoy the get-togethers at Bob and Judy's home in Everett. They keep the music flowing and that helps keep me inspired. Thanks, guys! I'm game nigh most anytime.

Regrets about back then? I wish I hadn't been so trusting of self-appointed agent-managers. One almost got me a record contract with a good folk label, but like Jerry, the record company wanted to know my performance itinerary. Since all I had lined up at the time was a steady, long-term job singing in a local coffeehouse, that wasn't good enough, so they dropped it. The self-appointed agent-manager lost interest in me when I balked at learning a bunch of newly written Jimmie Rodgers ("uh-oh-wella-wella-wella") type songs. Another SAAM started out real well and got Judy Flenniken and me, along with Alice Stuart and a couple of other people, some pretty good gigs. But for some unfathomable reason he started screwing up, wound up losing us a bunch of jobs because he didn't followed up, and managed to get Judy and me into a situation that cost us a very good gig that we wanted to do and, at the same time, almost cost us some good friends. Judy, Alice, and I found the right clause and broke our contract with the guy (actually, he'd written the contract and had broken it himself) and sent him packing.

One definite regret comes to mind. I have no records or CDs out. Just to have done one and had it out and available (not necessarily with the idea of making a wad of money) seems to my mind to be a point of—what?—validation? Something in the way of a "record" or archive that says, "This is what I do. This is what I've done."

The voice is still solid. The fingers still work. Perhaps yet.

Don Firth