The Judge
RAVES!
Tommy Roe - "The Folk Singer" (1963)
Going back to my own collection, and here's a slushy one for you.
It's hard to credit now, but there was a period of time - from about 1960 to 1966 - when folk music was hip. It was the peak period of The Folk Revival, and ended up producing a whole generation of new influences which duly made their way into other fields.
It was inevitable, then, that the odd song should appear which referred to the purveyors of this new old music. Merle Kilgore's The Folk Singer is one such, which was taken into the Top Ten by his fellow American Tommy Roe in the Spring of 1963.
The song contains some of the standard motifs of folk song - the rise from rags to riches, the sudden falling to earth again, and the cycle of having, losing and gaining love with all its redemptive features.
I still can't help feeling that she should have told him to piss off, myself.
