I don't mind saying here that this section has me just a wee bit perplexed. What I had planned to do, just doesn't seem like it is going to happen.

I have decided to do what I usually do in such cases and start and just let the page write itself !

It was to show a progression of American folk music from early times to now.

That proved to be too cumbersome, since it involves almost every country of the world !

Then I decided to make it about the folksong singers with which I was familiar. The names I knew something about, like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchel, James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Carly Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary were investigated.

Almost all composed the songs they sang and many had their roots in so-called "protest" songs.

As a teenager of the 70's, I remember both udy Collin's and Jaon Baez had great delivery of "Amazing Grace" that was enough to give you "goosebumps", particularly that of Joan Baez. There was just something about it that carried with it a huge amount of emotion.

Yes, we were "flower children" and peace and love were the words of the day, yet they were days of protest too.

If you are a "boomer", I'm sure you can remember the song " Alice's Restaurant" and good ol'e officer "Obie"- lol ! Accoustic guitars were carried slung over almost everybodys back no matter where they went, the longest hair you could grow was the fashion and "bell-bottoms" were wider than ever !

"Woodstock" the first really huge Festival of the time, will perhaps never be forgotten. I do recall "Wavy Gravy" stepping to the mic, looking at the crowd, and in that slow voice of his, seemingly awed by the event, saying " What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000 people."

Teenagers from all over the country traveled to that event, many thousands never actually made it to the festival itself, the rain and the mud and the crowd made it unmanageable. It shut down the New York State Thruway, no one was prepared for the hundreds of thousands of people that arrived.

When you have time, investigate what is on line about "Woodstock", the statistics, and photographs are amazing, the event a milestone in American music.

Having said all that and listening to the background MIDI as I typed, I have decided to make this a page of folk music of the 60's 70's and 80's.

Other names, can be tossed in here, like John Denver, Dan Fogelberg, Woody Guthrie and maybe even ENYA.

Some of these names may not fit exactly in the folk catagory, but they seem to fit here, better than any place else.

Folk music during those times, had elements of bluegrass, regular country and yes at times, did have that element of "protest.

During my research I ran into a page that I would like to share with you.

It's a page about the song made famous by Don Mclean called "American Pie", and although it is not a folk song and indeed is written about an event in the 50's - Buddy Holly's death - Mclean is a "boomer" and in my opinion "American Pie" is now almost a piece of "Americana"

When you go to the page, the MIDI is embedded in the page and will begin to play automatically, and the lyrics are there to scroll. Many of the lines have numbers after them and are referanced in the interpretation of the lyrics below the standard version.

It was fascinating to me and I read it several times !

It really is a page to enjoy and will leave "boomers" with alot of memories and things to think about, and will give those that are not "boomers an insight to the times.

When you have finished, please use your back button to return here and go to the next of my pages with links to our American folk artists and composers.