Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals Get it now!

Books on folk singing are few and far between, so it is good to have this edition which has interviews with about 63 of the best folksingers around, although some have passed on by now. The format is done by comments in sections covering subjects such as: define folk music, early collecting, Greenwich Village, the Red Scare, the folk boom in the 60's, folk-rock, nu-folk and the power of music.
There is an introduction by Pete Seeger and short biographies of the interviewees, a discography and an index.
Included interviewees are such people as, Don McLean, Arlo Guthrie, Oscar Brand, Judy Collins, Ronnie Gilbert, Holly Near and of course Pete Seeger plays a prominent part. Some refused to be interviewed -Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen and Alan Lomax. Missing are groups such as the Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four and The (original) Highwaymen. They were deemed by most of the interviewees as not legitimate folksingers, even though they popularized the genre for many of the others.
There are some interesting facts to learn, such as Country Joe McDonald crediting Pete Seeger with inspiring his " I'm Feel-like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag".
Even though this book was published in 2010 and many of the interviewees were still alive, more than half the interviews are from ones done in the 70's. I was really expecting some recent thoughts which would have been appealing. Still this book serves its' purpose of teaching about the folksong genre.Get more detail about Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals.