On the PBS pledge break issue, it strikes me as a bit less that honest that instead of playing regular programming (what they normally offer), they put on a lot of specials (not what they normally offer) during pledge weeks. And recently, they've been putting on a bunch of shows made especially for pledge breaks. I normally watch Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery and Nova and Frontline and Bill Moyers' Now and various music programs and I follow a couple of Britcoms. Then along comes a pledge break, disrupting my usual viewing schedule, and offering me such things as Wayne Dyer telling me how to be successful, or Caroline Myss giving me warmed-over Christian Science, or various weird permutations on the initially good Three Tenors. Isn't that what they call "bait-and-switch?"

[Rant On] Purist schmurist!!!   If you slap a label (e.g., "purist") on someone, it makes it a lot easier to put that person's viewpoint down. But that doesn't mean that person's viewpoint is any less valid. A "purist" is someone who wants the real thing, not some watered-down knock-off. [Rant Off]

I enjoyed parts of the "folk" show—in the same way I might enjoy a near-beer if the real stuff isn't available.

But picture this:—

1960. Coffeehouse called "The Place Next Door." Next door to the Guild 45th Theater (classed as an "art" movie house) and owned by the same guy who owns the theater. Capacity maybe a hundred and fifty people. Nice. Clean. Tables with red checked tablecloths, candle on each table, big espresso machine with eagle on the top in the kitchen, a couple dozen different types of coffees and teas, large selection of quality pastries, light snacks (sandwiches, cheese boards) available. No cover charge, but you'll pay whole 85¢ for a cappuccino (it's 1960, remember). At the time, it's one of the few places in Seattle where you can hear folk music. It draws lots of students from the nearby university, and it also draws the after-show crowd. Along with the jeans and sweatshirts, later in the evening one sees an occasional tux or evening gown. Open mike on Sunday evenings. I sing there on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Good gig, good venue. The audience is attentive and it pays fairly well.

A customer requests The Wreck of the Sloop John B. I learned the song from my prized copy of The American Songbag compiled by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1927) about five years before, so I sing it. After my set, the customer complains that I didn't sung the song right. "What do you mean?" I asked. "You didn't sing it the way the Kingston Trio does it!" he gripes.

This sort of thing happened all the time, and not just to me.

One of the problems with the Great Folk Scare is that although it indeed did increase the fan-base for singers of folk songs and it did inspire many people to join in, the power of the media (mostly records) tended to lock the songs and their manner of performance into a rigid form. I learned Tom Dooley from a Frank Warner record before the Kingston Trio even met and got groused at because I didn't sing the "I stabbed her with my Boy Scout knife" line that the Kingston Trio did. And Judy Flenniken sang a version of the Great Selchie of Sule Skerry that was not the same as the one that Joan Baez recorded, and people used to bitch at her about it, so she eventually dropped the excellent version she sang and learned the Baez version.

Not only was this a royal pain in the ass to the singers who learned their songs from sources other that the pop-folk records flooding that market, but for obvious reasons it stifled the normal folk process. If you were singing for audiences at all, once a song had been recorded by a pop-folk group, you'd better sing it the way they sang it, or people would give you a lot of grief.

That was one of the down-sides of the Great Folk Scare.

Don Firth