No, pot is not a folk thing. Not compared to jazz, and especially not if you compare it to rock. I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in the Seattle area during the Fifties there was plenty of opportunity for pot to rear its head, but it just wasn't in evidence. It was used by a few jazz musicians in this area, though. In the early Sixties, suddenly it seemed as if everybody was using the stuff, but in reality, most of the folk singers and folk song enthusiasts that I was acquainted with (not just in Seattle) didn't use it. About four or five singers out of a dozen or so who sang regularly at one particular coffee house seemed to be heavily into the stuff, and I knew a few people who were not especially into folk music who smoked it, but it seemed to be more of a Sixties thing than a folk music thing.

Assuming I'm covered by the statute of limitations, I was persuaded to try it in 1964. It made me a bit woozy, and I experienced minor space-time anomalies for a brief period, but to me, it wasn't that great a thrill. I woke up the following morning with my mouth tasting like a cesspool, and it was difficult to concentrate because I felt very fuzzy-headed. This was highly annoying because I was at a folk festival and there was a workshop that morning that I was especially interested in and I wanted to be sharp (the people I'd been with the previous evening missed the workshop entirely). A couple of months later I was persuaded to try it again. This time, I didn't even have the space-time anomalies, it just made me feel like I'd hyperventilated, and the following morning I had the same foul taste in my mouth. By then, I knew everything I wanted to know about pot. Hell, just gimme a beer!

This I did notice:— whenever the pot came out at a songfest (which was extremely rare until the mid-Sixties), those who indulged often sat around praising themselves and each other with comments like "Man, you've never sounded so good!" or "Man, I've never sounded so good!" when, in actuality, they were off-pitch half the time, they're sense of rhythm had vanished, and they were stumbling all over their fingerboards. Most of them played and sang a helluva lot better when they were straight. It's interesting to note that most of them aspired to fame and fortune, but they never actually worked at their music that hard. It occurred to me that they didn't really have to. Get together with a few like-minded friends, pass the joint around a few times, and they had their own Carnegie Hall right there in their cozy little cloud of pot smoke.

I quit smoking anything twenty-four years ago.

Don Firth