Sigh. I looked for this thread for a couple of days, not having posted on this forum for many, many months, and couldn't find it. Guess you can't write "PBS Folk Music," and hope it'll come up -- too case sensitive. Anyway, by the time I get here, the number of replies are so many, I can't keep track.

Geez. I mean -- yeah, the music is or was hokey, and yeah -- I found myself asking, "Hey, where are the Weavers? Where is Pete Seeger? Where is Joan Baez? Where, even, are Bud and Travis or the Tarriers?" I answered myself (for one thing, I hear Seeger is not in the best of health these days, but not sure. Maybe the others are too big and too busy).

But hell, this was the music that the majority of my generation made the jump from, to "real" folk music. And when I did discover the real stuff, it was a pretty quick jump. But -- as others have said, what a trip for me down memory lane! I was just in college in 1959, and seeing the Kingston Trio, after hearing nothing but Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon on AM radio was -- a revelation!!! Suddenly, there was public radio and all these new sounds! The impact of this commercial folk music, with its democratic edge and a kind of "Ban the Bomb" underpinnings, was incalculable in turning me on to other forms. I was trying to remember where I was when "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," came out, and near as I can trace it, I was just discovering those neat little dark coffee houses and folk dance enclaves that were to be so important in generating this musical movement. Sometime in there, I remember working as a waitress at a corny "Banjo Cafe," where players wore red-and white striped shirts, and thought that was real far-out.

What am I trying to say? Despite my boredom during many of the performances (and noticing that few original members but Hassilev were in those groups), this program had meaning for me. Like someone said earlier, I began to remember when even commercial music had a message, and when most people in America - can you believe it -- were leaned to the left.

Very soon, VERY soon -- I discovered old Child ballads at my university and at the AshGrove, saw Barbara Dane, heard Baez, Dobson, and the girl folksingers, and leapt from there to Jean Ritchie, who I felt was more real -- heard Van Ronk in 1962 (HUGE revelation!) and went on to discover Doc Watson, Robert Johnson, and the black blues singers. And then came the Koerner, Ray and Glover, the jug bands and the other folk music of our generation. Discarded Peter, Paul and Mary REAL quickly (btw, wish I had heard the Smothers Brothers at that time - I thought their "chirp, chirp" act on this show was brilliant! -- but I was too busy living life to watch TV).

And then when David Crosby came over to my house one time in 1964 or '65, with this new guy, Chris Hillman (I lived across the street from the Troubadour and they'd drop by to tune up), and insisted I change the station from Pacifica public radio to -- god good, AM! -- I was in shock. They were playing -- gasp -- folk-rock!

But this all preceded it. Maybe the presentation and idea behind this PBS show was clumsy and produced poorly -- but I am not ashamed to have soaked it up, with all those (yikes!) white-haired old codgers in the audience and on the stage.