Vast numbers of "straight" people used to think that folk singers and "beatniks" were all scraped from the bottom of the same Dumpster. Not all beatniks were folk singers, but all folk singers were beatniks (later, the word "beatnik" was replaced with the word "hippie," but they were not the same thing). And, of course, everybody in that same Dumpster smoked pot and/or took LSD. Actually, those who considered themselves to be "Beats" tended to be into poetry and jazz, often in combination, and didn't much care for folk music. In fact, a lot of them regarded folk singers with contempt.

It seems to me that associating pot with folk music is something that is done, not by observing reality and not by folk music enthusiasts themselves, but by many people who accept some half-assed media stereotype as the real thing. As I mentioned in my above post, during the Sixties, there were not all that many of my folk singing friends and acquaintances who were involved.

And today, of the umpteen-dozen folk singers and folk music aficionados that I know personally, I can only think of two or three who might occasionally sneak off for a toke. And that's just wild speculation, not based on anything I actual know or have heard. In the homes I've been to within the past few decades where people gather for songfests and "hoots," lighting up a joint would get you a fast escort to the door with the admonition to get the hell out and never come back. Lighting a cigarette might just get you the same treatment. At these affairs, the enjoyment comes, not from sitting around inhaling quantities of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol-filled smoke, but from singing good songs with good friends.

During the late Eighties, I worked for an accounting firm as a technical writer. I ran into more people there (suit and tie types) who were into pot than I ever did in the folk music community.

The stereotypes have it that in the Sixties we all wore long hair, beards, psychedelic shirts and flared slacks, and sat around playing guitars, singing protest songs, and smoking pot. This actually did happen! In the movies and on TV—and in real life (if it can be called that) by small number of brainless wannabes.

Don Firth