What got you hooked on folk music?

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 01:20 PM

Pop music.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 12:53 PM

My father died before I was born but bequeathed to me an original 1929 copy of Carl Sandburg's "American Songbag". I poured over it and I still have it.

When I was a kid, I sang "Streets of Laredo" at a YMCA summer campfire.

I was introduced to many of the people who I was fortunate enough to hear live.
Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Odetta and more.

In 1949 or 50, I was invited to the home of Will Geer in Santa Monica, California, and on that evening I heard for the first time Pete Seeger in the living room and sparks were coming out of his fingers. I met Cisco, Fred Hellerman, I think Ronnie was there.

I met Bess Lomax Hawes, Matty and Mickey Miller, Guy Carawan, Rich Dehr and Frank Miller, all these folks at one time. Later, Odetta, a friend, Derroll Adams, another friend..................well environment plays an important part in the folk music.........just being around the tremendously talented people who do it in person.

I saw the movie "Smoky" with Burl Ives and became a fan.

I think the very first thing was when my step-father sang me a song he learned while he was hopping freight cars in the Depression called "The Tennessee Blues"
which I have never heard anyone sing before or since.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: ollaimh
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 12:23 PM

i grew up in rural north east nova scotia. we were sirrounded with people who sand traditional songs in english french and gaelic. no one called it folk. if anyhting it was called scottish or acadien music. we had no concept there were lowland scotts, it was quite a shoc
k to me when i wnet to scotland, particularily because of the hatred there of highlanders(again their term--we never used it except for the games) we called ourselves celts or scotts, or acadien as you have it.

my first songs were galic lullabys and my first three albums were omar blondin sings the songs od newfoundland, doc watson and the cat came back, and the clancy brothers songs of rebellion and revolution(being eythniclly cleansed scotts we had a lot of sympathy with the ethnic cleaning in ireland--although again we didn't call it that then, we mosdtly called it transportation--but every one knew of the terrible conditions and the low survival rate for the early transportees)

i discovered later that we were not considered folk by the sixties and seventies folk people in london england and vancouver. the world is wierd and "folk' is full of wierd people building empires in their minds. so i oprefer to call whast i do celtic or traditional music(i do play some acadien music)

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,C. Ham
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 03:29 PM

When I was growing up in the 1960s we had some Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Odetta albums in the house that I quite liked alongside the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, Lovin' Spoonful, etc.

When I got to McGill University in 1974 there was one folk coffee house, the Yellow Door, just east of the campus, and another, the Golem, just west of the campus. The Golem, in particular, had one great act after another: Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Jesse Winchester, Bruce Murdoch, Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Erik Frandsen, Mary McCaslin & Jim Ringer, Bodie Wagner, Jay Ungar & Lyn Hardy, Ronney Abramson, Tex Konig, Sneezy Waters, and so many more.

Seeing all those people live, week after week, is what got me hooked on folk music.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Claire M (Permanant GUEST!)
Date: 18 Jul 12 - 04:54 PM

Hiya,

Steeleye Span. Loved their nasty songs the best. Got silly ideas in my head, that because none of the young people I knew liked them I must be a bit strange, forgetting I lived a quite old-fashioned country life where their songs made sense – - so I got into Eminem, then ditched him for Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, then went back to him and finally back to my beloved Steeleye – and now I like all of it at once.

I've heard this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqQGnJWHPvw

and loved it.
> "......sold ALL my Hendrix, Led Zepplin. Humble Pie, Grand Funk Railroad etc"

Why would you sell all that ??

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 27 May 07 - 05:12 PM

Aged 18, going to a folk club for somewhere to sing my own acoustic songs. Once there, found there was a guest on I'd never heard of (which would have been true for me of any folk artist at the time). His performance made me feel I knew nothing and needed to start again from scratch, which is what I did. The energy, skill and humour of the artist blew my socks off and changed my world. It seemed to me he looked and sang like an invigorated Wurzel Gummage! This very exciting man was Vin Garbutt. I now started investigating and singing traditional songs.

Soon after my world was rocked again by a man who played a guitar style where the voice and the story led the song, rather than the constraints of a never-changing guitar rhythm. He had an awesome knowledge and insight into the humanity within the songs, singing with an intensity and focus I had rarely seen (as did Vin): Martin Carthy. I now stopped writing altogether and focussed entirely on traditional material.

I owe these two great men a huge debt for the all the years of enjoyment and understanding of both music and life they have given me.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 27 May 07 - 11:51 AM

I'm not hooked. I can quit any time.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,'Ray Bucknell
Date: 27 May 07 - 10:01 AM

The first song I went nuts about was Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons."   I couldn't have been older than three, but I recall being mesmerized by the finger snapping and that great vocal.   Several years later, I saw the Chad Mitchell Trio on television for the first time.   That did it; there was no turning back.   I'm proud to say that two summers ago I took my then-12-year-old son to meet the Chad Mitchell Trio at one of their rare reunion gigs.   Will the folk addiction be passed to the next generation?   He's 14 now and the jury's still out, but I am still and shall remain hooked.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:35 PM

I punkfolkrock

therefore.

I.. am a cider drinker !!!


I thinks it all of the day..

ooarr ooarr Decartes..??!!



What got you hooked on folk music?


julie felix and the wurzels
and all the rest of mid 1960's BBC
and local west country childrens TV folk music entertainers..

and my boring party spoiling uncle with a guitar
who ruined really good family parties
with froggie went a couting
and the old woman who swalloed that f***in fly..!!!

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: LadyJean
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:15 PM

My sister is gay. I'm a flaming heterosexual. She loves dogs. I love cats. She has a buzz cut. I never cut my hair. I don't curse. She does. I don't smoke. She does. People laugh if I have more than one glass of wine. They're surprised if she has more than one bottle.
But our idea of heaven is a good folk festival.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:10 PM

Camp. That's where I discovered the kind of music you participate in -- swapping songs, clapping along, joining in on the chorus, and passing around whatever instrument was at hand – as opposed the kind of music you enjoy as spectator sport. I've been hooked ever since.
- Phil

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 26 May 07 - 07:33 PM

"he comes to our window and whistles me out, his hands in his pockets his shirt hanging out, but still I love I'll forgive him, I'll go with him wherever he goes"

I'd forgotten that one Raggytash. My mother used to sing that when I was......oh.....about five or six, and another I've just remembered, "I know where I'm goin', and I know who's goin' with me, I know who I love, but the dear knows who I'll marry"

Must have started even younger than I'd thought.

Don T.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: LadyJean
Date: 26 May 07 - 04:22 PM

One of the innumerable contradictions with regards to my parents. They were upper middle class Republicans and folkies. So, I heard it from my earliest youth. Dad's older brother had spent a summer collecting with Allan Lomax, so we had a good collection.
Four summers at School For Scottish Arts a two week camp for bagpipers and dancers when I was a teenager got me seriously interested. I went to camp with Jennifer Armstrong, who played a pretty fair fiddle at the tender age of 13.
I also listened to top 40 rock back then, until I got into an argument with a sexist DJ named Jeff Christie, who was broadcasting then on 14KQV, Groovie QV.   And went cold turkey on all the hits all the time.
The bastard is still in radio, and still a sexist pig. But now he uses his real name, Rush Limbaugh. So the man was good for something.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Warwick Slade
Date: 26 May 07 - 11:06 AM

I saw 'Hootenanny' on TV in early 60s with Cyril Tawney and then to a local club where he was singing. Went next week and saw Steve Benbow. The rest is history
Sadly they have recently appeard in that big folk club in the skys.
Sadly missed.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 26 May 07 - 07:44 AM

When I realized I could actually play the stuff, which I never could do with rock music.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 26 May 07 - 06:19 AM

I wish I knew what hooked me in --- but I don't. I was only about 8 or 9 when I bought the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs - so it must have started somewhere around there.... but "why" or "what" is lost in the mists of time and my unconscious....

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 26 May 07 - 04:58 AM

One of my first memories is my maternal Grandmother sitting me on her knee and singing to me "he comes to our window and whistles me out, his hands in his pockets his shirt hanging out, but still I love I'll forgive him, I'll go with him wherever he goes" I must have been about 3 at the time and she probably always sang to me. My Father then encourage me to sing in the back on the car especially on long journeys (all of 30 miles to visits Grandparents)I had to sit diddle for middle between my sister and brother.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Woods
Date: 26 May 07 - 04:05 AM

Two things got me hooked on what we now call Folk Music:

Records. When we were itty bitty kids in the 1960s we had a record player in the side room where we played with our toys. We knew how to put records on the thing and play 'em. I still remember hearing Red River Valley and others from that old player. I even remember two 10" records that weren't black, one was red and the other blue, both opaque. (We also had some red translucent records.)

Singing at school from those old song books. I even collect 'em now. Lots of times we just sang acapello. It was wonderful when you had a teacher that could pound out the tunes on the piano. Our 5th grade math and home-room teacher, Mr. Ahner, was great on the piano. We loved to sing with him playing. I'd love to get my hands on some of those books from the 1960s or earlier.

Woods
Southwest Missouri Ozarks

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Cookieless Bert
Date: 26 May 07 - 12:39 AM

Well it's a bloody long story with not one specific thing.

Like Jim Lad our family always sang. Even though Dad couldn't carry a tune in a bucket it didn't stop him. Mum would play the piano whenever we went to a pub.

Then there was this music teacher at school, can't remember what his name was, but he just gave up on trying to teach music to a bunch of rowdy boys, and he'd sit at the piano and we'd go through the song book. Most of which was folk songs 'cos they were out of copyright.

I didn't find out until later that most of them had been Bowdlerised.

It took a few Rugby songs for me to discover that. It's surprising what you can learn as second rank scrum!!!

Then there was Lonnie Donnegan which sparked further interest which led to other discoveries such as Bernard Miles and Bernard Cribbins and Paddy Roberts.

Then when I was on a contract in Bahrain, after reading just about every paperback of junk fiction, I happened across a book of folk music by Tom Glazer which had a chapter in the back on guitar playing.

Having a few Dinars to spare at the time I went and bought a guitar.

Three chords later, here I am.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 07 - 07:04 PM

What got me hooked? I wanted to be different from a lot of the people
I knew, so I got into folk music; and once I started into it, I
couldn't stop.
Then, a couple of really cute girls I went to high school with made
it even more appealling, for playing folk, also.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 07 - 03:12 PM

The Kingston Trio, then PPM on the radio

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Darowyn
Date: 15 May 07 - 12:51 PM

I object!
I'm not hooked on Folk music. I could give it up any time I want.
It's just that I don't want to .
I'll carry on listening and singing and playing it, just to prove that I could stop any time.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Kajikit
Date: 14 May 07 - 09:38 PM

Just remembering - Roger Whittaker, Burl Ives, A Prairie Home Companion on the radio, The Seekers, Peter Paul and Mary, later The Kingston Trio and The Smothers Brothers [when I was a teenager my Dad liked to listen to a radio show that played really old folk stuff (okay, to me the sixties is Really Old!), and the funny bits really caught my attention... I'd never heard of those two groups before then.] Every christmas carol I could lay my hands on... etc etc etc...

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Kajikit
Date: 14 May 07 - 09:24 PM

I've ALWAYS loved music that you can really SING (or dance to.) Whenever they made us do folkdancing at primaryschool I was thrilled because it meant an hour of enjoying that wonderful toe-tapping music... I lapped up every folk/traditional song that we sang during music lessons. I begged my mother to play her Seekers and 'Peter, Paul and Mary' albums for me at least once a week. I was absolutely thrilled when my parents gave me a real Irish folksongs record for my thirteenth birthday, and devastated when the other kids at school didn't share my excitement when I told them 'what I got!' (but it didn't stop me from playing it, and playing it, and playing it - I just quit being so public about my enthusiasm!

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Gulliver
Date: 14 May 07 - 05:47 PM

The Johnstons (Adrienne Johnston, her sister Luci, and brother Michael, Mick Moloney and Paul Brady) were the first folk group I really liked, due to the vocals and harmonies and I bought some of their records. Then Horslips came on the scene and had a cult following, which led to Fairport (Liege and Lief), Jethro Tull, John Martyn, Sweeney's Men along with the likes of British Blues, West Coast Bands, etc.

Then came Planxty, which got me hooked on trad, and I started going to the Dublin sessions--Donaghue's, McDaid's, O'Connell's, the Pembroke, Kennedy's, Brazen Head, Club Uí Cadhain, to mention but a few. There were British, American, Breton, musicians busking and playing the sessions also, and bringing their own music and styles, so got to hear and enjoy old-timey, bluegrass, skiffle, jazz/folk, political, etc.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 13 May 07 - 06:46 PM

The Herga folk club, when I was 15, and John Heydon (aged 24) was running it. And the people who introduced me to the club lent me recordings of the Watersons and the Young Tradition and Davey Graham and John Renbourne...

Kitty

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Folk lover
Date: 12 May 07 - 09:26 PM

Like Don, hearing songs when young such as the Ash Grove and Linden Lea, then discovering Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention in my late teens, then I really was hooked.

It's whatever turns you on I suppose - some like the raw gutsiness of soul, I like the purity of folk and the themes behind the songs which are often timeless and universal.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 May 07 - 06:33 PM

In 1948, as a seven year old primary school pupil, I was taught songs (not described as folk) like "The Ash Grove", "Waley Waley", "Linden Lea", and many others.

In spite of several years flirtation with skiffle, playing tea chest base, washboard, and finally guitar, it never really satisfied, and I returned to folk about 1956, and never left.

The music is so much a part of me that to be unable to continue would be worse than an amputation. "Waley Waley" is still a part of my repertoire.

Don T.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Mothy
Date: 12 May 07 - 05:30 PM

i probably got started by running the radio at a local country dance club.
then saw kate rusby in concert and never looked back.
now i even play in a folk duet

Moth

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: mg
Date: 12 May 07 - 05:27 PM

We sang the old songs at home and at school. My mother was quite musical and my father's father was a great singer I heard (I just put him in a song). I was taught by Irish nuns and would turn on the Scandinavian hour when my mother was at church..that was the only time we could listen to the radio..I have the Scandinavian hour on right now..I can't imagine a world without Scandinavian music...so pretty and bouncy...they taught us all to Schottisch up and down the gym floor in school...in case we ever needed to know that social skill...we had a couple of German oompah bands that would play on the fourth of July..that was about the only live music I heard except for piano..probably never saw a fiddle in my life till I was adult..I never went through a musical rebellious phase except fighting with my father to watch Lawrence Welk..I was the one who wanted to watch it not him except when Norma Zimmer came on...I repeat myself but my favorite quote from him is "how can you like that music...it only has one beat and one note and only a Norski could like it.." He also told me in no uncertain terms to never bring home an Irish tenor. mg

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 12 May 07 - 04:54 PM

aw...go on then!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 12 May 07 - 04:09 PM

Who wants it. 99 ....

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Mooh
Date: 12 May 07 - 04:07 PM

Must have been genetics. My father dabbled in folk music (aside from choral and church music), and my mother was raised in a very traditional (music wise) Scottish household, so something rubbed off on me.

As a child I was strangely drawn to church hymns based on old folk song melodies, without even knowing at first that they were folk melodies. That led to an appreciation for the songs from my parent's books of folk songs which they shared and we sang at choir camps, campfires, scouts, and elsewhere. Even after I got rebellious and discovered rock and roll I loved Jethro Tull and the folkier Led Zeppelin songs. Even went through a bluegrass phase. That carried me a long time until I started getting interested in acoustic groups and their propensity for playing folk music. By that time I was getting stuck in my ways.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Joules
Date: 12 May 07 - 03:26 PM

The People

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: oldhippie
Date: 12 May 07 - 01:02 PM

Hearing recordings by Carolyn Hester and Oscar Brand.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Tinker in Chicago
Date: 11 May 07 - 04:59 PM

As a freshman in high school, I attended a show where four seniors sang the Kingston Trio's "Bad Man's Blunder" while playing guitars and such. I was really impressed. Remember, in the early Sixties the idea that ordinary people could sing and play instruments was rather novel; our popular music was crooners (Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, et al.) and choirs (Ray Conniff Singers, Percy Faith, Mitch Miller and the Gang, et al.) I looked at those guys and thought, "Heck, I could do that!" So I started buying Kingston Trio records and imitating the seniors who were imitating the Trio.

I've often wondered what would have happened if the USA had not had the folk music boom of the early Sixties. Thanks to the Trio and their kind, we had a whole generation of young people who could play three chords on a guitar...and then the Beatles showed up playing three-chords rock songs. The folkies had prepared the soil, so to speak, and the British Invasion rockers planted the seeds.

The immediate results were the Beach Boys, who rocked some songs that the Trio sang and freely admitted they stole the vertical-striped-shirts idea from the Trio. And then the rock industry exploded.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 May 07 - 02:33 PM

When I was a little sprat, I must have heard Alan Lomax's folk music program on the "American School of the Air," because I listened to the whole run of programs they offered, but I probably had no idea who or what I was hearing. In the mid-Forties, I remember hearing Burl Ives doing a program on the Erie Canal, giving its history, telling stories about the people, and singing a bunch of songs. I learned more about the Erie Canal in one hour than I did in a whole batch of history classes. Then along came the Weavers in the late Forties. So I had a vague idea of what folk music is.

Then, when I was at the University of Washington, I began going with a lovely young woman who was very much interested in folk songs, had just inherited a really nice old parlor guitar from her grandmother, and was busily teaching herself how to play it. She showed me a few chords on the guitar, and I figured, "I think I can do this." I had taken some voice lessons a few years before and enjoyed singing, but I had never zeroed in on any particular genre of songs. Naught would have it but I bought myself an "El Cheapo" guitar ($9.95, and amazingly enough it's intonation was on and the action was fairly soft, even if it did have a tone like an apple-crate).

During the course of my learning to play (Claire was way ahead of me), we went to a concert given by local folk singer Walt Robertson. After about two and a half hours I was completely hooked. I met Walt subsequently and hit him up for guitar lessons. He also taught me a lot of songs and clued me in on books and records to get. I also saved my nickels and got myself a much better guitar.

I kept plugging away, practicing and learning songs, and singing at songfests and hoots and occasional gigs, when, in 1959, a friend who did programming for KCTS Channel 9 (local educational station) drafted me to do a series of TV shows called "Ballads and Books," funded by the Seattle Public Library. As a result of the TV series, I was a bit of a local celebrity and suddenly very much in demand for gigs. Concurrently, coffeehouses had begun opening around Seattle, and I pretty well had my pick of jobs. Later on, concerts, hootenannies, more television. . . .

Been at it ever since.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:39 AM

Interesting Mr. Red mentioned Kathleen Ferrier. Hers (on the London label) was one of the earliest LPs I heard when I was first learning.

Style apart, I will always be grateful to her for the song "Weel May the Keel Row." The first Tyneside song I ever heard, and loved, and still sing -- surprising it's not heard more often on our Yank side of the water. A beauty.

Bob

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:37 AM

Sex.

I did a little folk some time after university, but I didn't really inhale. The real skunk was so hard to find - apart (somewhat later) from the late Carey Roberts who used to sing at the Wish it Was a Brewery.

Then eventually I settled down with Jacqui, and her Hagstrom was allowed indoors (albeit on top of a wardrobe in the case), while my Futurama and amp got banished to the garage.

After a long time, it might have been as recently as 1990, she eventually produced an acoustic guitar for my birthday, and told me that she was fed up watching the telly doing nothing in the evenings, and I was going to learn to play guitar properly and stop all that rock and roll rubbish. Well, we all know the penalty for displeasing the trouble and strife. I never really got any good on the guitar, but that was the start of the slippery slope. Sex!

Grin.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: the one
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:23 AM

jazz

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: iancarterb
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:34 AM

Born into a house near NY that was full of Brit and Australian and New Zealand Royal Navy ratings til the end of WWII. I think I must have known Waltzing Matilda from the age of two, plus a number of interesting and colorful songs already familiar when I first heard Oscar Brand's Bawdy Song series 15 years later. Burl Ives records in the house as soon as there were 10" 78s, and done for after my first Newport Festival in 1960. The Warner family led me into things I had not heard before and haven't shaken since, even 40 years after my last Pinewoods!    Carter

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Dulcimer
Date: 10 May 07 - 10:56 PM

I didn't realize it at the time, but it was those school music books back in the early 50's. I loved singing, and music class. WE had a music teacher who came to our class once a week... pitch pipe and books in tow. Many of the songs I learned to love back then, became a part of the "folk music" era....   and those old school books, if you can come across them now, are a valuable resource.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:55 PM

My mother sang to me from the day I was born (28 Oct. 1937). By age 3 I knew a lot of songs I had learned from her.

When I was a kid there was a radio program _Wayfaring Stranger_ by Burl Ives that we listened to. We also had phonograph records by him & other folksingers.

My high school (Putney, a boarding school in Vermont) had a vigorous folksinging tradition when I was there (1950-1954). Students taught other students to play the guitar & banjo and handed down versions of songs.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Wayne Monroe
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:14 PM

The Kingston Trio, 1958. Of course, I'd heard The Weavers, Harry Belafonte and others on the radio prior.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 07 - 06:27 PM

The first songs I recall loving were many that I sang while being part of a church choir in the 1950s. Then along came "On Top of Old Smoky" and "Goodnight, Irene." Many of the trios from the 1950s did pop music that involved dynamite harmonies, and I have always loved harmony work. My grandfather played piano, harmonica and sang. He had what I thought at the time was a beautiful voice, and he passed his love of church music on to me. Folk music to me is not something that has to be two hundred years old. Grampy knew some folks songs like "Red River Valley" and he did a rendition of "Shenandoah" that I can still remember from fifty years ago. It was beyond beautiful.

What got me 'hooked' on folk musi was the ease with which they told stories and allowed for many people to sing together. And the melodies were of a kind also: pretty, facile and touching. Even to this day my 'definition' of folk music means the songs have to incorporate those qualities and attributes.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: HouseCat
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:57 PM

We didn't call it folk music either. It was just the songs my mother taught us, old mountain songs from her childhood like "The Brown Girl" and "In the Pines". My father built Appalachian dulcimers and when he decided that the only thing you could do with four daughters was form a band, we started going to festivals. That's when I was told I was a folksinger. My passion for Irish and Scots music began as a teen with the realization that alot of the songs we were singing sprang from those traditions.
So I guess folk music was just always there, don't remember when it wasn't a huge part of my life.
HC

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:43 PM

Bob Coltman...Kendall Morse is looking for you! (His email is way back up there ^

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Beer
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:16 PM

Was and still am in the Irish Folk. Did all the hang outs in Montreal. Then I heard "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot". Blew me away. From then I've always kept searching and every once in awhile some great folk writer will pop up. Like John Prine/ Kris Kristofferson and others.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,chinmusic
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:15 PM

Dylan and Lightfoot back in the 60s. I've been in recovery mode ever since.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:11 PM

Since I can remember I have had a preference for songs that told stories and was drawn to Burl Ives when he was on the radio. I was 12 when REA reached our farm and it was several years later when we had television and I began to hear Harry Belefonte on occasion plus a dulcimer player named Dierdre (or something like that). I saw her only once and never heard of her again. Though my mother knew several old songs I did not have any contact with traditional musicians as I was growing up. There were several guitars in the family and I took possession of one however it was not playable.
Though I still enjoy a variety of music folk music is still the most important.