Have you no sense of humor, sir? Must everything revert to the conventional wisdom of "these days"? Or perhaps a sense of proportion - it was Niles who introduced me to the whole idea of "early" folk music, whether faux or real (and I don't know how you define the latter). I started with the Scots and English songs I learned at the cradle from my English (Scots educated) mother in the late thirties - and the light opera, G&S were a significant part as she was there for some of the openings. In the late fifties WWVA (Wheeling, W.Va.) could be heard in NJ late at night, and at the time it played Ives, Niles, cowboy, and Appalachian (the Ritchie Family was bit) instead of Nashville. I hid my radio (no transistors then, my father was involved in that invention) under the covers and stayed up way past my bedtime to memorize songs.
I don't give a damn if a musicologist would call them faux-folk, Guthrie's songs were all words overlayed on old tunes - but he was played in his own (rather bad) voice. Pieces from the Lomax collections (father and son). Niles gave a sense of Elizabethan music that raised the interest in the real thing. I haven't dropped my resolve on not getting into arguments, but I think that what I say above is ecumenical. Does it really matter how one is introduced to a music that isn't Broadway or Tin Pan Alley? What matters is one's appreciation of the milieu. Should I fault someone who was introduced by Joan Baez, although she was still at Radcliffe when I was a working singer. Perhaps some are so advantaged that from the day of their birth they have been oriented only to one milieu (advantaged?). The rest of us like various things, some better than others. Best, Jon
