Feature article on the ethics of commercial folk music for Sept. 2009 Victory Review.

1. | Branagh | Hawk | Mad Men | Clayton | Washboard | Lighthouse | Refs | Hank |
(click shortcuts to jump to sections)
"New Orleans box car where WPA adult literacy classes are held, Jan. 20th, 1937."
Photo from WPA Photograph Collection, New Orleans Public Library. [1]
⇑ ⇓ Why was Kenneth Branagh playing Lincoln?
Do you know that book of hilarious mishearings of famous song lyrics called 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy? [2]
It came to mind as I wrote a note to KUOW's Weekday show on how we Americans misunderstood Kenneth
Branagh's oration at the Olympics opening ceremonies: [3]
Dear KUOW Weekday,
On your Monday, July 30th, 2012 show hosted by Katy Sewall, I was bemused by the reaction of
her guest Yvette Moy to Sir Kenneth Branagh's performance at the opening ceremonies of the 2012
Olympics:
[Katy Sewall] One of the only parts of talking in the opening ceremony was Kenneth Branagh
giving a speech from The Tempest. So let's listen to a little bit:
[Kenneth Branagh] ...in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches

2. Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
[Katy Sewall] Here we go, a big dramatic reading by Kenneth Branagh. What'd you think of
that part, Yvette? That ushered in the entire stage change from being a pastoral village to the
Industrial Revolution.
[Yvette Moy] Yeah, and you know I'm not that smart about British literature, I'll be honest. It's
definitely a blind spot in my life (giggling). I figure Kenneth Branagh is British, it makes sense. I'm
just gonna go with it. I rode the wave.
Engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Kenneth Branagh)
greets the Industrial Revolution with the wonder of Caliban
at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.
Photo by Ryan Pierse, Getty Images.
Doesn't Shakespeare belong to the whole world, not just to Great
Britain? Apparently, Americans were confused:
"Olympic opening ceremony has fans thinking
Kenneth Branagh plays Abe Lincoln" [4]
[Jodi Jill] Sir Kenneth Branagh was dressed as
Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the 2012 Olympics in
London on Friday night, but most didn't even know the
actor was going to be part of the show. In perfect form
and definitely one of his best global performances ever,
the actor gave a speech from The Tempest. Part of the
opening of the London Games, it was a big moment in
English history.
Ah, well that didn't quite translate if the audience was
American, lacked any international history lessons, and
definitely think the world revolved around the United
States. In a hysterical moment on Twitter that makes
Americans look rather self-centered, online media began to overload with Americans wanting to know
why Abe Lincoln was being represented at the Olympic opening ceremony in London....
Sam Cooke lives! [5]
Don't know much about the Middle Ages,
look at the pictures and I turn the pages...
The lines that Kenneth Branagh declaimed come from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The island monster Caliban,
mocked by the shipwrecked men, expresses his wonder at the magical music he hears, played by the invisible
spirit Ariel:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

3. Branagh delivered this speech while dressed as 19th century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a heroic
symbol for Britons of their Industrial Revolution. The "Quite Irregular" blog points out that in director Danny
Boyle's surrealistic history pageant, "Brunel speaks as the wizard's servant, not the magical master." [6] The poet
Jack Spicer took up a similar theme for a group of students in Vancouver in 1965 when he described "the
business of taking poetry as coming from the outside rather than from the inside." Spicer thought of inspiration as
a mystic does, one who believes that he actually hears a muse, "some source of energy that comes from
outside." [7] We like to tell ourselves such stories, whether or not anyone but ourselves believes them.
⇑ ⇓ The hawk is out...
"Khe Sanh Post Office, Feb. 1968. Photo by Dana Stone," Flickr site.
[Day Tripper] "Mayhew, crazy f*cker, he sleep bare-ass.
He so tough, man, the hawk is out an' he's in here bare-ass."
[Michael Herr] What's that? About the hawk?
[Day Tripper] That means it's a co-o-old mother..."
— Michael Herr, Dispatches. [8]
Two Mondays later, I was tinkering with my song sheet for "Corinna," figuring out how to adjust the melody for
the phrase "walkin' till the break of day" to fit within the ever-narrowing limits of my aging voice. Over breakfast,
I'd switched on KUOW's "Weekday" again, and heard a segment called "A Hard Night's Sleep" where they asked
listeners "Where is the most awful place you've slept?" [9] Back in the day, I did some cross-country hitchhiking.
When the cars stopped coming late at night and it was drizzling and "the crickets put on gloves of cellophane," I'd
crawl up the concrete slope beneath a bridge on some abandoned stretch of interstate and sleep on the little
shelf that its girders were propped on, a yard from the traffic crossing overhead. It was gravelly up there but dry.
Did that outside of Casper, Wyoming. The land was flat prairie, so they'd dug out the underpass, and trucks
would downshift just as they hit the low point underneath the bridge to make it up the other side. The clang-a-
bang echo of their gears shifting woke me up every time.
I wished that I could afford a train ticket and sleep in style as we rolled through the mountains toward Vancouver.
But crashing under a bridge wasn't really so bad. I was young, and it was spring and my girlfriend had dumped

4. me, so I wrote off the experience as an adventure. What stays with me is the ride out of there that I eventually
caught, with an airman headed up to Pocatello and then west along the Snake River to Mountain Home Air Force
Base. This was 1968, and this kid told me that he'd volunteered for Vietnam to get out of Idaho. My lord. I have
no idea what became of him. I guess it's not the place itself that gets so hard, it's who you are while you're stuck
there, how lonely it makes you feel.
In the version of "Corinna" that I sing, this guy is out walking at night, looking for his lost woman. He sings:
The hawk is out and he's hungry.
Chickens tiptoe on the silver frost.
I added those lines, borrowing the southern folk image of the winter hawk
from Day Tripper, a black Vietnam grunt with a runty white friend named
Mayhew, two fictional soldiers that journalist Michael Herr created to help
him report on the siege of Khe Sanh in his articles for Esquire that
became Dispatches. [10]
Then I found two more lines to rhyme with those:
There's some warm man beside you.
I light my stove and hope that you're not lost.
I was thinking of the practical deals that rural men and women made to
survive the sharecropper's economy. Young Robert Johnson referenced
such practicalities when he invited a girl to "Come on in my kitchen"
because "It's goin' to be rainin' outdoors," then added slyly "You can't
make the winter when it's dry long so." Whatever the weather might be, a
warm body beside you beats a cold bed. He knew how to write a verse
that evokes more than it says, whether or not the Devil whispered it into
his ear.
Classmates from my graduate Folklore classes might look askance at me meddling with the lyrics of "Corinna."
I'm no sharecropper, just some suburban folkie who went through his changes in a little town in Ohio as the '50s
became the '60s. What business do I have inserting images into an old blues like "Corinna," never mind whether
"the hawk is out" derives from the Delta culture or not? Even worse, how could I justify to a folklorist the stanza
that follows:
C'mon, honey rock me like your back ain't got no bone,
I'm gonna work you till you shake and you moan."
"No, no daddy. Hold me, like my backbone is your own.
Jellyroll is such a sweet thing, you can't leave it.
Honey, don't you ever leave it alone.
Here we have the young woman advising her new man to, uh, modify his usual approach and "Try a little
tenderness," as Otis Redding sang. Apparently, she didn't care to be left alone, which might explain why the man
she left behind is outside wandering around in the moonlight. There are plenty of familiar blues phrases here, but
this verse is a songwriter's concoction, not one recorded off a rural farmhand's front porch. Is it legitimate to sing
an edited and augmented "Corinna" with invented verses there to knit a traditional blues into an elliptical short
story that might never have existed as such? What is that?

5. ⇑ ⇓ Mad Men
Sheila White and Paul Kinsey, Mad Men,
Season 2, Episode 10, "The Inheritance."
I wonder if I could sue Camel cigarettes for stuffing my mailbox
with unsolicited "Elect your President of Hump Day" ballots. I
mean, if only for their slogan "Ignited we stand." Jeez, these Mad
Men are pests.
On the second season of Mad Men, in Episode 210, "The
Inheritance," we see a stylishly bearded and hilariously out-of-
place Paul Kinsey (played by Michael Gladis) from the Sterling
Cooper agency seated nervously next to his black girlfriend Sheila
White (Donielle Artese) on a bus full of Freedom Riders headed
grimly into the deep South in 1961 to integrate bus stations and
lunch counters. Paul is pontificating on the role of advertising in
the modern world:
[Paul Kinsey] Advertising, if anything, helps bring on change.
The market, and I'm talking in a purely Marxist sense, dictates that
we must include everyone. The consumer has no color. [11]
His fellow passengers just stare out the window, not an all interested in this ad man's self-justifications. White
boy gonna take a beatin' too. But no, Paul bails out early before the crunch, to his girlfriend's scorn, then lies to
his office mates about fleeing back north: "I think we made a difference, and it was the adventure of a lifetime."
For his bus mates, maybe, but not for him. Pretty hard to remain without color when you're facing a crowd of
angry rednecks. They'll either turn you yellow or leave you black and blue, maybe add a splash of red too. Ken
Kesey told Tom Wolfe to watch out for his crisp white suit: "You're gonna get some on you."
Nelson Wright sent me a review of a book on the dozens which reminded him of my article "Herding Cats:
Whoppers, Raillery, and Southern Irony." I loved Elijah Wald's gloss of a poem by Langston Hughes: [12]
[Elijah Wald] Langston Hughes, his last cycle of poems was
called "Ask Your Mama," and it was his poems about living
surrounded by white people on Long Island, which is where he had
retired to. And it's all about:
They rung my bell to ask me
could I recommend a maid?
I said, yes, your mama.
Folklorist Kathryn L. Morgan cracked up her friend Marjorie telling family
stories about her tart-tongued great-grandmother Caddy, a slave when she
was a girl who then worked as a maid in post-Civil War Philadelphia. Caddy
had memorable things to say about the strangeness of white folks: [13]
[Kathryn L. Morgan] You know Caddy was a midwife for the
poor whites and Negroes, and she had to go from house to house
to deliver babies. Many times she tended the other sick people
while she was in the house. One day she came home cussing and
fussing because somebody had put a diaper on an old man who
was not able to control his bladder. Caddy said, "you work hard all your life so you can get a bed of
your own, then, when you get old, somebody straps you up so you can't even piss on it!"
Marjorie and I laughed so loud we attracted attention and had to remember where we were. I imagine
people wondered what the white woman with her colored friend found so hilarious...

6. Back when I was an undergraduate at Oberlin, I'd come back a hundred years east to my parents' house in
Mentor-on-the-Lake, thirty miles the other side of Cleveland, to get lunch and wash my clothes, then head over
to suburban Wickliffe to jam on bass with my guitarist friend Jim Bickley. He and his family and neighbors lived in
an isolated black middle-class enclave a few streets wide surrounded by that otherwise Italian suburb. Jim and
his friends would play fierce sessions of the dozens with each other. When I protested after a barrage of one too
many "your momma's," he explained "No, no, we're only kidding, it's not for real." But man, they showed no
mercy.
Maybe they were rehearsing for what they heard when they ventured out to the grocery. The way singing even
an invented verse for "Corinna" might help you get ready for a night too cold to sleep:
Got a house full of echoes,
and they won't let me, just don't let me sleep.
They won't let me, just don't let me sleep.
When the moon's grin turns nasty
y'know it cuts, it cuts right through my sheets.
⇑ ⇓ Paul Clayton and Dylan's Use of Traditional Music
In 2008, Scarecrow Press published a biography of Clayton by
Bob Coltman called Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival, for
which he did extensive research. Folksinger and songcatcher Paul
Clayton Worthington studied with folklorist Roger Abrahams at the
Univ. of Texas during the 1950s. He then studied at the Univ. of
Virginia with Prof. Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., long time President of
the Virginia Folklore Society (no relation of mine). Clayton helped
Prof. Davis to make taped copies of his extensive archive of
aluminum disk recordings, and helped prepare Davis's More
Traditional Ballads of Virginia (1960). [14]
Paul Clayton also had a recording career from the early days of
the urban Folk Revival. In 1954, Clayton recorded an album called
Sailing and Whaling Songs of the 19th Century for Legacy
Records that included such popular Folk Revival standards as
"The Turkish Revelee" (aka the Chad Mitchell Trio's "Golden
Vanity") and "Santy Anna" (aka the Clancy Brothers' "Santy
Anno"). [15]
There's a Mudcat Café message trail called "Dylan's Use of Trad
Music" that offers some fairly salty opinions on the subject of our
most famous songwriter and his sources, Clayton in particular. As
Dick Weissman wrote me: [16]
[Dick Weissman] Dylan ripped off another friend, Paul Clayton, for "Don't Think Twice," which was
a melody Clayton collected from his neighbor in Virginia.
Catherine Moore, who interviewed biographer Coltman for a 2010 article in the Univ. of Virginia Magazine, tells
the story this way. When Paul Clayton wasn't at the university or playing gigs,
[Catherine Moore] ...his home base was always a remote, primitive log cabin in the area of
western Albemarle County known as Brown's Cove. The cabin became both an artistic retreat for
Clayton and the site of some wild parties, according to Coltman, but it also served as the launching
point for his song collecting. He was responsible for 'discovering' a number of singers and pickers in
the area, including Mary Bird McAllister, whom Clayton recorded singing songs like "Across the Blue
Mountain to the Allegheny" in the late '50s.

7. Clayton and Foss and Roger Abrahams recorded a trove of songs, ballads and tales from Marybird McAllister,
including a song called "Who's Gonna Buy You(r) Chickens When I'm Gone?" Clayton worked up his own version
of that one called "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons?" and recorded it on Nashville's Monument Records in 1960
(the lyrics are reproduced on the Mudcat Café site). Dylan drew from Clayton's song key verses and part of the
melody for "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," recorded in 1963 on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Catherine Moore
furnishes this background on Dylan and Clayton, drawn from Coltman's biography:
[Catherine Moore] Dylan visited Clayton's cabin and spent his 21st birthday at a party thrown by
Clayton in the Charlottesville apartment of Steve Wilson, one of Clayton's closest friends. Dylan had
met Clayton in 1961 when both were making nightly rounds of the Greenwich Village folk clubs. But
Dylan was familiar with Clayton before they met; a version of the song that comes closest to Clayton's
"big hit" – "Gotta Travel On" – can be found on the earliest recording Dylan made, 1960's "St. Paul
Tape." In 1964, Dylan told an interviewer that a folk song
[Bob Dylan] "...goes deeper than just myself singing it, ... it goes into all kinds of weird things,
things that I don't know about, can't pretend to know about. The only guy I know that can really
do it is a guy I know named Paul Clayton, he's the only guy I've ever heard or seen who can sing
songs like this, because he's a medium, he's not trying to personalize it, he's bringing it to you ...
Paul, he's [in] a trance."
One Mudcat Café correspondent invoked Pete Seeger's
recollection of something Woody Guthrie said: [17]
[Woody Guthrie] He stole that from me, but I steal
from everybody.
Per Clayton biographer Bob Coltman, Clayton himself used to
say, with wry humor:
[Paul Clayton] If you can't perform, write; if you can't
write, rewrite; if you can't rewrite, copyright; if you can't
copyright, sue.
Clayton settled out of court with Dylan. Coltman wrote this about
their dispute on the Mudcat Café thread "Origins: Who's Gonna
Buy You Ribbons (Paul Clayton)": [18]
[Bob Coltman] Ahh, the folk process.
In 1967, Paul Clayton took his own life. A number of Mudcat Café correspondents, notably the late Sandy
Paton, [19] continued to condemn Dylan for copyrighting under his own name both the words and the music of
songs built on traditional melodies: [20]
[Sandy Paton] Frankly, I think his use of traditional tunes without giving credit to his sources (folks
like Jean Ritchie for "Nottamun Town" for example) was atrocious.
Jean Ritchie's "Nottamun Town" was the source of the melody for Dylan's "Masters of War" (also recorded on
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan). Jean Ritchie herself wrote Roger McGuinn that:
[Jean Ritchie] The song has been in our family back many generations, and was collected at the
Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, KY by Cecil Sharp around 1917 from the singing of my
sister Una, who was a student there.
And she wrote Mudcat Café that:
[Jean Ritchie] Loraine Wyman collected "Fair Nottamun Town" in Knott County, in our community.
"Uncle" Jason Ritchie (actually Dad's first cousin, but all called him uncle) took her around to find

8. singers, and sang several for her himself. It was Uncle Jason who supplied his daughter Sabrina and
her cousin (my sister Una) – students at Hindman Settlement School where Sharp and Karpeles were
'headquartering' – with all the lyrics and melody to "Fair Nottamun Town" and "The Little Devils."
An arrangement for piano of the song appeared under the title "Fair Nottiman Town" in Loraine Wyman and
Howard Brockway, Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs (1920), pp. 6-9. [21]
Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" is another famous song whose creation involved some, uh, judicious
borrowing. Paul Simon has acknowledged that he learned its signature guitar part from British folk music icon
Martin Carthy. The story goes as follows: "Scarborough Fair" is a variant of Child ballad #2, "The Elfin Knight."
Martin Carthy learned "Scarborough Fair" from a song book called The Singing Island put together by Peggy
Seeger and Ewan MacColl (Belwin-Mills Music Ltd., 1960). He eventually worked up the lovely fingerpicking
arrangement of the song heard on his first album Martin Carthy in 1965. [22]
While Paul Simon and Tom Paxton were touring England in the mid-1960s, they had dinner at the Hampstead
flat of Carthy. Before the evening was done, Carthy "gave" Simon his arrangement of Scarborough Fair. "I wrote
the whole thing down, with lyrics and chords, and handed it to him." Carthy recalled. After Simon returned to
America, he worked up his own version of Martin Carthy's arrangement: [23]
[Paul Simon] That's a gorgeous song. I learned that from Martin Carthy. "Scarborough Fair" is like
three hundred years old. Martin Carthy had a beautiful arrangement of it, and my arrangement was like
my memory of his arrangement."
Art Garfunkel then set Simon's version of Martin Carthy's arrangement in counterpoint with "Canticle," "a
reworking of Simon's 1963 song 'The Side of a Hill' with new, anti-war lyrics." Simon & Garfunkel's album Parsley,
Sage, Rosemary & Thyme was a huge hit, and the title cut "Scarborough Fair" went to the top of the charts.
Meanwhile, back in England, Martin Carthy was unhappy that Paul Simon copyrighted the song under his own
name, instead of using the credit "Trad. Arr. P. Simon & A. Garfunkel." Carthy thought for years that Simon
claimed the song as entirely his own, but actually Simon regularly acknowledged Carthy's arrangement when
performing "Scarborough Fair" in concert. [24]
After years without resolution, this feud had a happy ending. On Sunday, May 20th, 2001, on the occasion of
Martin Carthy's 60th birthday, a tribute concert called "Martin Carthy: The First Sixty Years" was held at the
Oxford Apollo Theatre. The concert program included, on p. 8, a handwritten note from Paul Simon, dated Oct.
2000:
[Paul Simon] Martin Carthy was one of the great innovators of the 60's English folk scene. His
guitar work was clear and elegant. His influence was wide-spread and profound. – Paul Simon
A 4-CD + 1 CD-ROM boxed set called The Carthy Chronicles was subsequently published, whose CD-ROM disc
includes "60th Birthday Concert clips." The very first clip listed is: "01 : A message from Paul Simon." Martin
Carthy told the story of their reconciliation in a 2004 interview with Acoustic Magazine (UK): [25]
[Martin Carthy] Neil Wayne, who produced my box set, contacted Paul Simon and asked him if he
would do a tribute for my birthday. Paul said he would, only if he could do it directly. So Neil gave him
my numbers and Paul called me and we talked. He said he's doing three gigs at the Hammersmith
Apollo and would I like to come and play? I was able to go down to the last gig and play "Scarborough
Fair" with him, which was fantastic.
Afterwards he sat down and confronted me – "Were you mad at me?" Which was OK. At that time I
was young and stupid enough, as well as being encouraged to be mad at him. I mean, the song is a
traditional song and everybody learned from each other. Everybody was looking for the big deal. Paul
told me that he and Art Garfunkel were about to give the whole thing up. Then this producer stuck
some drums and bass onto "Sounds of Silence" and it went straight to the top of the American charts!
He said that from that moment on, everything he did turned to gold and he was the only one who really

9. hit it big from the UK.
He told me that every time he sang "Scarborough Fair" he always acknowledged it as my arrangement!
But who's Martin Carthy? So journalists never printed that. In fact, on the single it said "Written by Paul
Simon," but Paul has never received any PRS and MCPS royalties from "Scarborough Fair" – I
checked! So who's the fool? We made it up and I'm happy it's over!
⇑ ⇓ Mystery Train on a Washboard
Brownie McGhee and Leslie Riddle. From the RiddleFest site.
When we talk about white pop stars covering songs by black musicians, as we must when discussing Elvis
Presley and the song "Mystery Train," there is all our country's sad history of ethnic discord to remember. Since
the music business is a business, people did eventually get sued over this practice. As you'd expect, the lawsuits
tended to focus on cases where the new versions made a lot of money. George Harrison got sued for "My Sweet
Lord," which took its melody from the Chiffons' "He's So Fine," and John Lennon got sued for "Come Together"
(by Chuck Berry's publisher) for riffing on the opening line of Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" about "old flat top."
Lennon, who consistently credited Berry as a major influence on the Beatles, probably meant this as a humorous
homage – he expected his fans to get the reference. The Beatles actually argued in court that they couldn't be
guilty of copyright infringement because none of them could read music. Really? [26]
The sheet music for the song "Mystery Train" bears Junior Parker's name, but verses of the song were in use
years before he recorded it. In 1947, a full five years before Junior Parker cut "Mystery Train" for Sun Records,
Luke Wills' Rhythm Busters recorded "Long Train Blues." Luke was Bob Wills' brother, and his Texas swing
version includes these verses: [27]
My baby caught a train that was nineteen coaches long.
The only gal I love, and she's on that train and gone.
My baby done me wrong when she caught that long black train.
She said goodbye to me, and the blues came down like rain.
Actually, folks had actually been singing about that "long black train" for quite awhile before that. A.P. Carter,
patriarch of the Carter family, went songcatching back in the late 1920s and early '30s with Lesley Riddle, a black
musician in Tennessee who became his friend and helper, and "introduced Carter to a wealth of spirituals and
blues." When they went to cabins and small churches, "Carter wrote down the lyrics and Riddle memorized the
melody, which he'd play once they returned home." [28]
Apparently the materials for "Mystery Train" were circulating in the local country blues tradition. 'Esley' taught

10. A.P. a song called "Worried Man Blues," which includes this verse: [29]
The train arrived sixteen coaches long,
The girl I love is on that train and gone.
Compare that with the opening verse of Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train":
Train arrived sixteen coaches long,
Well that long black train took my baby and gone.
'Esley' Riddle's picking style inspired Mother Maybelle Carter's 'Carter Scratch'
guitar lick, and she also learned from him how to use a pocket knife as a
guitar slide. After WWII, Riddle moved north and stopped performing. In the
early 1960s, Maybelle Carter told Mike Seeger about Riddle, and Mike
tracked him down in Rochester, New York. Seeger encouraged Riddle to
begin playing music again, and got him to appear at festivals, where he
performed a broad range of gospel, blues, and folk songs. Riddle died in
1980.
Seeger's recordings of Riddle were preserved on the album Step By Step –
Lesley Riddle Meets the Carter Family (Rounder, 1993). There is now a
RiddleFest held each year in Burnsville, NC to remember Lesley Riddle. [30]
Mike Seeger performed at the first two RiddleFests before he passed away in 2009. [31]
This brings us to Sam Phillips' Sun Studios in Memphis, where both Junior Parker and Elvis Presley recorded
"Mystery Train." The '78 recorded by Little Junior's Blue Flames in Nov. 1953 had the up-tempo "Love My Baby"
on the A side (Sun 192, Memphis Music U-88), and a laid-back R&B version of "Mystery Train" on the B side
(Sun 192, Memphis Music U-89). Oddly enough, it is the A side that sounds more like Elvis's 1955 recording of
"Mystery Train" (Sun 223).
Per accounts on Mudcat Café and elsewhere, Sun Studio's Sam Phillips probably suggested to guitarist Scotty
More that he use the riff from Junior's "Love My Baby" on Elvis's version of "Mystery Train." Anyway, Sam and his
studio musicians probably all hung out in Memphis bars where the young guitarists played hot licks like that.
According to the liner notes in the 1984 boxed set Sun Records, the Blues Years 1950-1956, "Mystery Train"
was originally credited solely to Junior Parker and published by Memphis Music. But by the time Elvis Presley
recorded his version in 1955, Sam Phillips had added his name to the copyright and transferred the publishing to
Phillips' Hi Lo Music. This might have been done to settle a contract dispute with Junior Parker.
Sam Phillips recorded a host of black R&B performers at his Sun Studios in Memphis from 1950-54 including
James Cotton, B.B. King, Howlin Wolf, Junior Parker, Little Milton, and Rufus Thomas. One by one, these artists
got big enough to move on to national labels. So Sam had to figure a way to keep himself in business. "I'd been
looking for a person, white skinned, that could put the feel of a black person into a phonograph record. Knowin'
we grew up in the same fields, so to speak." Sam Phillips needed to "broaden the base, and let white kids enjoy
black music, and black kids enjoy white music." On July 5th, 1954, in walked 19-year-old Elvis Presley, who
sang "That's All Right Mama" during a break. Phillips had his crossover hit. "Mystery Train" was one of the many
that followed. [32]
Plenty of blues performers have taken credit in their music publishing for traditional verses and phrases learned
through traditional sources ("sixteen coaches long"). [33] "I Know You Rider" is a traditional blues, but if your
band sings a certain sequence of verses, then return to the first verse at the end and sings it in a capella
harmony, then you'll have to pay the Grateful Dead royalties for covering their arrangement. (Arrangements of
traditional songs can be copyrighted.) As it happens, the research for this article began as I was working up a
songsheet for my own version of "Mystery Train." Typically, I either place the composer's name under the title or
"Traditional." But I wasn't sure about this one. Where did Junior Parker get the materials for "Mystery Train"? Out
of thin air?

11. Washboard Chaz playing "Mystery Train" in New
Orleans.
Then I came across a nifty version of the song by a New
Orleans street musician named Washboard Chaz,
recorded by a global music project called "Playing For
Change." In 2000, Chaz moved from Boulder to New
Orleans and formed the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio. He
also holds percussion workshops for children and adults.
"Playing For Change" recorded him outside a local bar
called the Spotted Cat, a good sidewalk spot where he
performs regularly. Later, they recorded Italian slide guitarist Roberto Luti, who listened to Chaz's performance on
headphones while seated on a stoop in the French Quarter, and added his accompaniment on a vintage National
steel guitar. [34]
This brings up another issue. What happens when a popular song reenters the folk tradition, and all sorts of
people begin to play it in different ways again, according to the conventions of their own traditions? Washboard
Chaz's impeccably funky chunka-chunk left me wondering whether it is possible or useful to separate the
"composed" part of a song from the "worked out in performance" part that continues to evolve in wonderful ways.
Is Chaz a local "folk" performer, a street pro who came down from Boulder, or both? Was Jean Ritchie right to
blur the distinction? [35]
[Jean Ritchie] Two comments on my singing, in my lifetime, that I treasure: One from Maud
Karpeles. We had just met, and she had asked me to illustrate a long ago lecture in NYC. She
introduced me with: "And here is Jean Ritchie to sing the songs. She cannot be termed a folksinger,
because she has been to college." The other one from Alan Lomax, also to an audience, "Of course it's
a folksong, because she's a folk."
I guess that I blur it too. My version of "Corinna" has new and altered verses. So does my version of "John Riley,"
plus a recently added west African rhythm influenced by (but not the same as) that of a song called "Djigui" by
Malian kora player Issa Bagayogo, from his 2004 album Tassoumakan (included in the 2012 Putamayo collection
African Blues). [36] Perhaps I'll credit these arrangements of songs from traditional sources that keep evolving in
my hands as "Traditional, adapted by Hank Davis." But I wonder what the music lawyers will make of "adapted"?
Now that all of us can listen to the whole world's music, you can "own" a song for just about as long as you can
"own" a lover....

12. ⇑ ⇓ Jorge Drexler's Lighthouse
Jorge Drexler at Berkeley Studio Sessions, Jan. 20th, 2011.
Photo by 5342 Studios. [37]
The songwriter and guitarist Jorge Drexler was born in Montevideo,
Uruguay to German Jewish emigrants, and trained at the university
there as a medical doctor. Since 1996 he has lived in Spain, and
written and performed his lovely songs for international audiences. In
2004, Drexler won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for his
song "Al Otro Lado del Río," composed for the Walter Salles film
The Motorcycle Diaries. He has since scored the soundtrack for
James Ivory's 2009 film The City of Your Final Destination. Here is
an excerpt from Jorge Drexler's interview with NPR's Debbie Elliott
on All Things Considered, March 10th, 2007: [38]
[NPR] After his Oscar win, Jorge could have taken advantage of
his new fame in America. Instead, he turned inward. And the title of
his new album 12 Segundos de Oscuridad (Twelve Seconds of
Darkness) begins to tell that tale. ...I understand this was inspired by
a lighthouse in the home of your youth, Uruguay?
[Drexler] Yes, it's a place called Cabo Polonio on the eastern coast of Uruguay, the Atlantic coast. A
very beautiful place, and isolated, you can't get in a car there, they don't have electricity. And there's a
lighthouse that gives a beam every twelve seconds. I went there to search for the songs for the record.
I needed to isolate myself, this had been a very crazy year and a half. And that cycle of light, one
beam every twelve seconds, I started writing and I found, like, the guiding metaphor for the record also
in the lighthouse. I mean, the lighthouse guides not only by the light that it keeps, but also by the
period between two lights, which is darkness, actually. And I have that sound, which I made for the
lighthouse, that goes all through the song.
[NPR] (after song) One of your lyrics about the lighthouse – "It's little use to the sailor / who doesn't
know how to wait." What did you mean by that?
[Drexler] That no matter how short that period of darkness is, you have to wait until the next light
comes. If you're anxious, it's like you lose a very important part of the information.
[NPR] After your Oscar spotlight, were you waiting on something before producing your next album?
[Drexler] Yes. I like ballads, you know. I used to be a very 'light-oriented' person. And I need, I kind
of felt that I was missing part of the information of life. I decided to look at what was going on on the
other side. (sings "Soledad")
[NPR] (after song) "Lonliness who keeps me company. / Me who never knew very well how to be
alone." You know, I don't speak Spanish, but I have your translation here for this music. But even
though the first time I heard it, I wasn't looking at the translation, the melody is just so beautiful and the
way you sing the song, it almost conveys the meaning without knowing what you're saying.
[Drexler] Thank you so much. I believe lyrics to be a really important side of what I do, but it seems
that they might be not that important. People get a lot of information without actually understanding the
meaning of the words.
I wonder whether NPR's Debbie Elliott would have made such a remark to Mercedes Sosa or to Chilean martyr
Victor Jara, were they still with us to be interviewed? Drexler's limpid melodies are often compared to those of
Caetano Veloso, his subtle lyrics to those of Chico Buarque. I'm taken with the Jorge Drexler song "El Museo de
Las Distancias Rotas" that plays beneath the end credits of the film The City of Your Final Destination. In this

13. song, Drexler sings of someone floating down a river, perhaps without a boat: [39]
"El Museo de Las Distancias Rotas"
by Jorge Drexler
El museo de las distancias rotas
Se quedaba con lo que me decías
Tú dejabas cair con cuenta gotas
Tu vida en la mía,
Tu vida en la mía.
Un silencio que llego de lejos
Fue a ocupar mi corazón vacío
De la pena que se llevó flotando el río.
Cada cual a merced de su corriente
Y a merced de la gravedad, el velo
De pronto el tiempo quedó latente
Tu mano en mi pelo,
Tu mano en mi pelo.
Y un silencio con tus mismos ojos
Fue a ocupar mi corazón vacío
De la pena que se llevó flotando el río,
De la pena que se llevó flotando el río.
I decided to ask local acoustic guitarist and composer Wayne Lovegrove about Jorge Drexler. Lovegrove
composes instrumental whale songs for the acoustic guitar that blend tropes from the Crafty Guitarists of the
Seattle Guitar Circle and from Windham Hill's Michael Hedges with his own intricate technique. (Lovegrove will
perform at Sojen Cellars in Everett on Friday, Sept. 7th at 8 pm.) [40]
When I sent Wayne clips by Jorge Drexler, he sent me back a clip from Toninho Horta. Toninho has been a
sought-after Brasilian session player for decades. Wayne spoke of "that breezy South American vibe" that he
heard in Toninho's song "Bicycle Ride." He adds, "I generally prefer non-English lyrics because they become
much more instrumental yet retain the power and poignancy of the human voice." That is, as an instrumentalist
himself, he also hears lyrics as music. [41]
But he's right, Drexler does have a gentle touch on the acoustic guitar that resembles Toninho's as he plays a
meditative tone poem like "El Museo de Las Distancias Rotas." There is a great quote from Pat Metheney in the
Wikipedia article on his Brasilian friend Toninho Horta, calling him "the rare guitarist who understands harmony in
its most intimate ways." That's also a lovely thought, to understand that elegant harmonies and chord voicings are
essential to what you are offered when you are offered intimate music. (Metheney's Unity Band will play
Dimitriou's Jazz Alley on Sept. 13-16.) [42]
As I write this, Weekend Edition Sunday has just told me "When people play music together, oxytocin is released.
This is the bonding hormone that's released when people have an orgasm together." Heard that on NPR, so it
must be true. So what were the consequences of that evolutionary adaptation? "The argument is that music,
among other things, helped to defuse interpersonal tensions and smooth over rivalries." Well, you'd think so.
What's more, "Language doesn't produce it" (that bonding hormone). Really? Perhaps they didn't try poetry in
their laboratory. [43]

14.
There is a passage from Book XVII of Dante's Purgatorio that might be
connected to Boccaccio's anecdote of a bookish Dante becoming so absorbed
in a new volume at the local c13 manuscript shop that he failed to notice a
wedding procession blaring by: [44]
Imagination, that dost so abstract us
that we are not aware, not even when
a thousand trumpets sound about our ears!
The local Italian women of Dante's Padua must have found the devout poet
less than proficient in his social skills, despite the fact that he shared their
Mediterranean ethnicity. Apparently there are Italians, and then there are
Italians. Perhaps he was experiencing poetic bliss. Anyway, he must have
had angels and flames on his mind.
Speaking of angels and flames, columnist Maureen Dowd writes that "[Mitt]
Romney seems to be forever on a journey out of vagueness, an endless
search for identity." [45] That makes him a horizontal version of Camus' Sisyphus: 'we must imagine him happy.'
Not sure that I can. But that won't prevent his Mad Men from scrambling to get him elected. Joe Camel has
nothing on them. My family back in Ohio, a hotly-contested swing state, has been inundated under campaign ads
for months. Ralph Reed promises that his blitzkrieg of Koch-funded Tea Party rants, like Hurricane Isaac's
onslaught landward across the dredged-out wetlands, will only gather force:
[Ralph Reed] We've identified 17 million faith-based voters in 15 states living in 11 million
households. Every one of those households is going to be contacted by this organization – seven to
twelve times. We're going to mail them. We're going to text them. We're going to email them. We're
going to phone them. And if they haven't voted by November 6th, we're going to get in a car, and we're
going to drive to their house, and we're going to get them to the polls. [46]
I tend to agree with my daughter, who wrote in a recent paper for college that "people used to put more thought
into their messages before communications became instantaneous, when we communicated with each other more
slowly." The poet David Antin delivers experimental "talk poems" as deliberate philosophical meditations. To
conclude one called "i've called this talk tuning," delivered at Wesleyan University and transcribed in his book
Tuning, Antin tells a tender anecdote about giving a ride from Brooklyn into Manhattan to an "unlikely couple" from
eastern Europe, an older man and a beautiful young woman who were, as he gradually discovered, former
engineers who'd chosen to become contented refugees, happy to be working far simpler jobs here, together.
Their conversation was probably conducted in Rumanian, a Romance language that Antin didn't actually know. He
tells their story to illustrate how the "trivial illusion of understanding" promoted by worlds fairs and chambers of
commerce can give way to actual knowledge of others when we give ourselves time to ponder. [47]
Antin's point, that understanding does not come quickly but slowly gathers, reminds me of playing Dylan's
Bringing It All Back Home until the lyrics made sense (or not). My brother Frank and I used to do that back in the
day with the lights off, just two red spots visible in the darkness, the power switch of his Fender amp and the tip
of his cigarette. [48] Later when I heard Robert Bly repeat poems at readings, I understood that it was to let your
ears catch up. It's a good thing when images set us pondering, and we want to hear them again and again until
we can figure out what to think.
This man heads out looking for Corinna, "walking, walking till the break of day." But he won't find his absent lady.
She's gone and busted Tom Dooley out of jail. You remember Tom, the sad hero of the huge hit by the Kingston
Trio in 1958, just two years after Paul Clayton recorded "Tom Dula"? [49] Poor Tom who shows up for his fair
share of abuse in this surrealistic joke Dylan told on the back cover of Highway 61 Revisited? [50]

15. [Bob Dylan] ...the hundred Inevitables hide their
predictions & go to bars & drink & get drunk in their very
special conscious way & when Tom Dooley, the kind of
person you think you've seen before, comes strolling in
with White Heap, the hundred Inevitables all say "who's
that man who looks so white?" & the bartender, a good
boy & one who keeps a buffalo in his mind, says "I don't
know, but I'm sure I've seen the other fellow someplace"
& when Paul Sargent, a plainclothes man from 4th street,
comes in at three in the morning & busts everybody for
being incredible, nobody really gets angry – just a little
illiterate...
Well, just as
the second mother was with the seventh son
and they were both out on Highway 61.
so Corinna and Tom have caught themselves a train that won't be coming back. Our hero gets to the platform
just a few steps too late. So he keeps on coming back, night after night, every time you sing the song:
Headed down to the depot,
but my Corinna she's already gone.
My Corinna, she's already gone.
Tears they come a-rolling,
so I set, I set my suitcase down.
Faro de Cabo Polonio, Uruguay. Photo by Poesía de Luz.

16. ⇑ ⇓ References
(click ref numbers to jump to citations in article)
1. The Jan. 20th, 1937 photo of a New Orleans box car where WPA adult literacy classes were held
comes from the WPA Photograph Collection, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. Click
Education, then click in the right-most column for photo 17.32.
Pete and Mike Seeger warm up before the Folksong '59
concert at Carnegie Hall. Photo from The Independent (UK).
2. See Paul Gavin, 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (New
York: Touchstone, 1995).
3. See KUOW Weekday, "Stomach Problems, And The Buzz
Around The Water Cooler" (podcast), July 30th, 2012.
Yvette Moy spoke with host Katy Sewall at @30:47 about
the Opening Ceremony at the Olympics. Moy blogs at
www.soigotcancer.blogspot.com.
4. See Jodi Jill, "Olympic opening ceremony has fans thinking
Kenneth Branagh plays Abe Lincoln" The Examiner (UK),
July 27th, 2012.
5. See Art Garfunkel with James Taylor and Paul Simon, "What
A Wonderful World" (YouTube).
Sam Cooke, "Wonderful World" (YouTube).
6. For what Yvette Moy and the Lincoln tweeters missed, see:
"Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 - 1859)," BBC History.
"Ten greatest Britons chosen," BBC News, Oct. 20, 2002.
"100 Greatest Britons" (Wikipedia).
[and]
"Boyle, Branagh and Bonkers: the Olympic Opening Ceremony"
on the 'quite irregular' WordPress blog, Saturday, July 28th, 2012.
"Caliban and Brunel: Kenneth Branagh's Speech at the Olympics Opening Ceremony"
on the 'quite irregular' WordPress blog, Sunday, July 29th, 2012.
7. Quoted in Robin Blaser's essay "The Practice of Outside," in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Black
Sparrow Press, 1980), p. 273.
8. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Avon Books, 1978), p. 129.
"Dana Stone Khe Sanh Post Office Vietnam War," Flickr site.
"Sean Flynn in Saigon, 1966. Photo by Tim Page," The Cat From Hue site.
9. See KUOW Weekday, Romney's Running Mate, And OCD In Children (podcast), Aug. 13th, 2012.
10. Michael Herr acknowledges that Day Tripper and Mayhew are fictional characters in Paul Ciotti, "Michael
Herr: A Man of Few Words: What Is a Great American Writer Doing Holed Up in London, and Why Has
He Been So Quiet All These Years?" Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1990. Herr also told Ciotti:
"I always carried a notebook. I had this idea -- I remember endlessly writing down dialogues. It was all I
was really there to do. Very few lines were literally invented. A lot of lines are put into mouths of
composite characters. Sometimes I tell a story as if I was present when I wasn't (which wasn't difficult) -
- I was so immersed in that talk, so full of it and so steeped in it."
See also Eric James Schroeder, "An Interview with Michael Herr: 'We've All Been There'," published in
Writing on the Edge 1:1 (Fall 1989).
11. For more on the AMC series Mad Men, the character Paul Kinsey played by actor Michael Gladis, and
Paul's trip with the Freedom Riders on the episode "The Inheritance," see:
"Mad Men, Season 2, Episode 10: The Inheritance" and episode photos, AMC site.

17. "Q & A – Michael Gladis (Paul Kinsey)," AMC site.
Q: What's been your favorite scene so far this season (2008)?
A: [Michael Gladis] ...In "The Inheritance," I get a really big kick out of the bus actually, just
because it's so ridiculous. That's a prime example of Paul in all of his pretentious glory. What he has
done to get to that point, the roundabout way that he ends up on this bus, may be slightly
disingenuous...but once he's there, to be sitting there and preaching about the value of advertising,
which he also has a little bit of disdain for, is just hilarious.
"1960s Handbook – Freedom Riders" (Mad Men blog).
Discussion of "The Inheritance" episode, Television Without Pity forum, Oct. 14, 2009:
They were challenging the desegregation laws associated with Boynton v. Virginia, 1960. The first
freedom ride left Washington May 4, 1961. In Anniston, AL, Bull Connor and Tom Cook told the KKK
that if they arranged a mob that they would have 15 minutes with no arrests. They stopped a
Greyhound and tried to lock people in the bus and firebomb it. Read more in Wikipedia.
"Freedom Riders" (Wikipedia).
12. See "The dozens as American art form: No, your mama!" Boston Globe, Aug. 05, 2012. Interview with
Elijah Wald, author of The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama.
In my Feb. 2012 VR article, "Herding Cats: Whoppers, Raillery, and Southern Irony," footnotes [11] and
[12] offer various sociolinguistic sources on the topic of the dozens.
13. See Kathryn L. Morgan, "Caddy Buffers: Legends of a Middle-Class Negro Family in Philadelphia."
Reprinted in Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel (Prentice-Hall: 1973; Univ. Press of
Mississippi, 1990), p. 608.
Paul Clayton, 1959. Photo from Robert Shelton & David Gahr, The
Face of Folk Music (Citadel Press, 1968), p. 100.
See Mudcat Café Thread 12668.
14. For more on Paul Clayton, see:
Bob Coltman, Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival
(Scarecrow Press, 2008).
Stefan Wirz, "Paul Clayton: Discography."
"Clayton, Paul" The Bob Dylan Who's Who site.
"Paul Clayton (folksinger)" (Wikipedia).
"The Virginia Folklore Society: The Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr.
Years."
"A Guide to More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1956-1961."
15. Paul Clayton, Sailing and Whaling Songs of the 19th
Century, Legacy 389 (1954).
Paul Clayton, "The Turkish Revelee" (YouTube), from
Legacy 389.
Chad Mitchell Trio, "Golden Vanity" (YouTube) single.
Included on their live album At the Bitter End (1962).
Paul Clayton, "Santy Anna" (YouTube), from Legacy 389.
The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, "Santy Anno"
(YouTube), from Sing of the Sea (1968).
Also sung by Liam Clancy (a cappella) on Clancy, O'Connell & Clancy, The Wild & Wasteful Ocean
(1997).
Paul Clayton's 1954 album was reissued in 1956 by Tradition Records as Whaling And Sailing Songs
From the Days of Moby Dick (Tradition TLP 1005 LP, 1956). Tradition again reissued this album in 1997
as Whaling & Sailing Songs.
See also footnote [48].
16. Paul Clayton, "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone)" (YouTube).

18. Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, 1963).
For more on Clayton's song as a source for Dylan's, see:
Catherine Moore, "The Song Collector: How folksinger Paul Clayton brought the music of Virginia to the
world," (PDF) Univ. of Virginia Magazine, Spring 2010, p. 54.
Seth Kulick, "Who's Goin' to Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone," Bob Dylan Roots site.
Matthew Zook, "Dylan influences." Expecting Rain site, Feb. 20, 1997. Lists traditional sources for 33
Dylan songs. His entry for song #8, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," mentions Clayton, but gets the
source song wrong and doesn't benefit from Bob Coltman's subsequent research on Clayton and Dylan.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," live at Tipitina's, Dec. 16, 2005. (YouTube).
Dick Weissman, Which Side Are You On? (New York,
Continuum Publishing, 2005), his fascinating participant's
history of the Folk Music Revival, has this (p.95) on Paul
Clayton and the Greenwich Village folk scene where Dylan
and Clayton met:
The American Youth Hostel on West 8th Street in
Greenwich Village had open-mic nights on Sundays and
often the Washington Square people wandered over there
to perform, or they went to an apartment downtown at 190
Spring Street, where first Paul Clayton and later Roger
Abrahams lived. Both of them were folklorists and
collectors as well as performers, and the Spring Street
sessions tended to be more traditional than the other
gatherings.
For more of Dick Weissman's tales from inside the Folk
Revival, see:
Hank Davis, "Dick Weissman: A Long Memory For
Musicians," Victory Review, June 2010.
Hank Davis, "Activism and Imagination: Woody listens to the migrant girls sing," Victory Review, July
2010.
17. Mike Regenstreif, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226629:
Pete Seeger quotes Woody Guthrie's comments about another songwriter: "He stole that from me, but
I steal from everybody."
18. See Mudcat Café "Thread #94416: Origins: Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (Paul Clayton), begun Sept
4th, 2006:
Joe Offer, Mudcat Café Thread #94416, Msg #1827176:
Lyrics to Clayton's "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone."
Bob Coltman, Mudcat Café Thread #94416, Msg #1827288:
And the subject of a cause celebre and out-of-court settlement in the 1960s. My Paul Clayton
biography [Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival (Scarecrow Press, 2008)] has some detail on the
matter, including its roots in a song Paul collected called "Who's Gonna Buy You(r) Chickens When
I'm Gone." Ahh, the folk process.
19. Mudcat Café "Thread #21320: Dylan's Use of Trad Music?.
Excerpts from this extensive Mudcat Café thread, begun May 11th, 2000:
Okiemockbird, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226614:
I don't consider it infringement or so-called "piracy" to copy from the public domain. The P.D. is meant
to be copied, after all. If a songwriter adapts a p.d. melody and then tries, in intention or in effect, to
enforce copyright in the underlying melody (not just in the copyrightable adaptations, if any) -- that
practice strikes me as ironic.
Mike Regenstreif, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226629:
Pete Seeger quotes Woody Guthrie's comments about another songwriter: "He stole that from me, but

19. I steal from everybody."
Midchuck, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226661:
When you write a song with a traditional melody and new lyrics by yourself (which in itself is fine with
me, done it my own self), and record it, the honest thing to do (IMO) is put the credits on the record
as: "Lyrics: (You); Melody: Trad: (orig. title)." I don't recall Mr. Zimmerman ever doing so. Maybe I
missed something.
Sandy Paton, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226664:
Frankly, I think his use of traditional tunes without giving credit to his sources (folks like Jean Ritchie
for "Nottamun Town" for example) was atrocious.
Mike Regenstreif, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226698:
Sandy, Not that I think Dylan needs me to defend him, but... If you're going to chastise Dylan for
using traditional melodies without attribution, you have to do the same to Woody Guthrie, Pete
Seeger, Tom Paxton, Utah Phillips, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, and many, many others.
Sandy Paton, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226872:
I'll admit it's a can of worms, and I generally try to avoid these discussions, but there was something
deliberately deceptive about Dylan's claims of "words and music" on all those early songs (the ones
that formed the basis of his storied reputation) that offended my sense of propriety. Still does. How
costly would it have been to simply say "tune: traditional; new words by Bob Dylan?"
20. For more on the late Sandy Paton:
Folk-Legacy Records, "In Memory of Charles Alexander (Sandy) Paton."
Folk-Legacy Records, "Musical Tribute and Memorial for Sandy Paton."
Tony Russell, "Sandy Paton obituary: Musician and founder of the Folk-Legacy label." The Guardian
(UK), Sept. 30th, 2009.
21. For more on Jean Ritchie's "Nottamun Town," source of the
melody for Bob Dylan's "Masters of War," see:
Jean Ritchie, "Nottamun Town" (YouTube).
Bob Dylan, "Masters of War" (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,
1963).
Okiemockbird, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #226893:
The tune to "Masters of War" is certainly "Nottamun
Town." It seems very close to the Ritchie version, and it's
also very close to "Fair Nottiman Town," the version that
appeared in Wyman and Brockway's Twenty Kentucky
Mountain Songs (Oliver Ditson, Boston, 1920), pp. 6-9.
Wyman, Loraine and Brockway, Howard, Twenty Kentucky
Mountain Songs (Boston, Oliver Ditson, 1920), (EZ Folk).
"Fair Nottiman Town" (EZ Folk).
Wyman, Loraine and Brockway, Howard, Twenty Kentucky
Mountain Songs, (Boston, Oliver Ditson, 1920), (Kentuckiana
Digital Library). "Fair Nottiman Town" begins on page 6.
"Fair Nottamun Town," Roger McGuinn's Folk Den, Oct. 1,
1999:
[Jean Ritchie] The song has been in our family back many generations, and was collected at the
Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, KY by Cecil Sharp around 1917 from the singing of my
sister Una, who was a student there.
Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #668638, March 13, 2002:
[Jean Ritchie] Loraine Wyman collected "Fair Nottamun Town" in Knott County, in our community.
"Uncle" Jason Ritchie (actually Dad's first cousin, but all called him uncle) took her around to find
singers, and sang several for her himself. It was Uncle Jason who supplied his daughter Sabrina and
her cousin (my sister Una) – students at Hindman Settlement School where Sharp and Karpeles were

20. 'headquartering' – with all the lyrics and melody to "Fair Nottamun Town" and "The Little Devils."
My motivation for my "family copyrights" is in order to preserve sources of our songs, for folklore
scholars of the present and future. I never require money for the use of these songs – only that they
credit the source (of course, some do not ask for free usage, nor want it).
As to "Masters of War," I wanted only to ask Bob Dylan (then my friend, in the Greenwich Village folk
group of those days) to honor the source of the melody, with something like "Trad. Ritchie Family,
KY." But lawyers take things out of one's hands...however, the "royalties" were a small out-of-court
settlement – I never got any royalties since. And "words and music by Bob Dylan" was dropped in
connection with the song (where the music should have a credit is left blank). I was satisfied with
that, and I believe that Bob acted honorably with me.
I hope this answers all foregoing questions. Sincerely, Jean.
22. Martin Carthy, "Scarborough Fair" (YouTube). from the album "Martin Carthy (Fontana TL5269, 1965).
"Martin Carthy (album)" (Wikipedia).
Lamarca, Mudcat Café Thread #17171, Msg #165555, Jan. 19, 2000:
Carthy was working on his early albums for Topic, and had worked out a stunning guitar arrangement
for "Scarborough Fair", a variant of the traditional Child ballad #2, "The Elfin Knight."
GeorgeH, Mudcat Café Thread #17171, Msg #165644, Jan. 20, 2000:
The Carthy/Simon dispute went to court and was decided in Carthy's favour (he says the settlement
paid off his mortgage; given that his house was fairly modest, this clearly wasn't a vast sum). And
more significantly, Carthy insists (and I don't know anyone who knows the man who doesn't accept
this) that he ONLY took action because Simon was attempting to claim copyright in a traditional song.
Patrick Humphries, "'Scarborough Fair' 'Martin Carthy.'" BBC Sold on Song, 2003.
Shimrod, Mudcat Café Thread #118486, Msg #2564355, Feb. 9, 2011:
According to the [BBC Sold on Song] website, Martin Carthy learned Scarborough Fair from a "Ewan
MacColl song book." That would probably be 'The Singing Island' compiled by Peggy Seeger and
Ewan MacColl (Belwin-Mills Music Ltd., 1960). In the notes to the song (which is, of course, a variant
of the ballad 'The Elfin Knight'[Child 2]) the compilers tell us that it was collected "From the singing of
Mark Anderson, a retired lead-miner of Middleton-in-Teasdale (sic), Yorkshire, in 1947." But, I've no
doubt, the version which appeared on Martin Carthy's first album (Fontana TL5269, 1965) was
'arranged' by him.
23. Colin Randall, "Friends again with Paul Simon." The Telegraph (UK), April 19th, 2001:
...Simon was one of several American...folk singers drawn to the London acoustic scene. With...Tom
Paxton, he went for dinner at the Hampstead flat of Carthy. Before the evening was out, Carthy had
"given" Simon his own arrangement of Scarborough Fair. "I wrote the whole thing down, with lyrics
and chords, and handed it to him."
Wolfgang, Mudcat Café Thread #6745, Msg #41218, Oct. 11, 1998:
"Scarborough Fair" Paul Simon learned the tune from Martin Carthy in 1965.
[Paul Simon] "That's a gorgeous song. I learned that from Martin Carthy. "Scarborough Fair" is like
three hundred years old. Martin Carthy had a beautiful arrangement of it, and my arrangement was
like my memory of his arrangement..."
Bob Dylan also visited Martin Carthy, per Mudcat Café Thread #124309, Msg #2746272, Oct. 15, 2009:
There is an excellent article by Reg Meuross in this month's Acoustic Magazine – the second in his
series about the history of folk music in the British Isles. He talks about how Bob Dylan came to
London in the early sixties and soaked up English folk music – becoming especially friendly with
Martin Carthy. After a short trip to Italy, Dylan came back and played Martin what he called his
version of Scarborough Fair – "Girl from the North Country." Lord Franklin was to follow in the form of
"Bob Dylan's Dream" – old tunes and themes, new context. Martin, apparently, not only liked them,
but was flattered that his singing of the songs was the catalyst. Is English folk music world music?
Yes....and no.
Mike Regenstreif, Mudcat Café Thread #21320, Msg #229540:
I just pulled out my copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second album, from 1963. In the liner

21. notes discussion about "Bob Dylan's Dream," Nat Hentoff talks about Dylan getting the idea for the
lyrics after an all-night discussion with Oscar Brown, Jr. and goes on to say: "The song slumbered,
however, until Dylan went to England in the winter of 1962. There he heard a singer, whose name he
recalls as Martin Carthy, perform "Lord Franklin," and that old melody found a new adapted home in
"Bob Dylan's Dream."
24. Simon & Garfunkel, "Scarborough Fair" (YouTube + lyrics) from the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and
Thyme (1966).
Simon & Garfunkel, "Scarborough Fair / Canticle" (YouTube). Notes mention Martin Carthy.
Simon & Garfunkel, "S&G, Andy Williams - Scarborough Fair / Canticle - Live" (YouTube). Andy Williams
Show, 1968.
Simon & Garfunkel, "Scarborough Fair" (YouTube). The Concert in Central Park, Sept. 19, 1981.
"Scarborough Fair (ballad)" (Wikipedia).
25. The Carthy Chronicles (2001), (4-CD + 1 CD-ROM box set). The CD-ROM includes "60th Birthday
Concert clips." The first of these is "01: A message from Paul Simon."
Kevin Boyd, "Martin Carthy: The First Sixty Years." Carthy Online, Feb. 17, 2011. Downloadable PDF of
the "Martin Carthy: The First Sixty Years" concert program from May 20th, 2001 at the Oxford Apollo
Theatre, which includes (p. 8) the handwritten note from Paul Simon dated Oct. 2000. In Acoustic
Magazine (UK) "Interviews: Martin Carthy," as they marked the release of his 2004 album Waiting for
Angels, Carthy retold the story of his reconciliation with Paul Simon.
26. Joseph C. Self, "The 'My Sweet Lord' / 'He's So Fine' Plagiarism Suit (1993)."
George Harrison was sued for borrowing a melody.
Aaron Humphrey, "Songs The Beatles 'Stole': Come Together" (2009).
John Lennon was sued for borrowing from the opening line of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me."
27. Luke Wills' Rhythm Busters, "Long Train Blues." (YouTube), (1947).
"Luke Wills" (bio page), Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys site.
"Sean Flynn in Saigon, 1966. Photo by Tim Page,"
From The Cat From Hue site.
28. For background on Leslie Riddle, see:
"Lesley Riddle," Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, March
6, 2012.
"The Lesley Riddle Story", Traditional Voices Group,
Burnsville, NC.
Janet Hurley, "Rediscovering Riddle," Our State North
Carolina, Feb. 2012.
Good Soldier Schweik, Mudcat Café Thread #128289, Msg
#2872412, March 26, 2010: Bio of Lesley Riddle.
"Lesley Riddle (1905-1980), Folk and blues musician."
Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
"A. P. Carter" (Wikipedia).
29. Carter Family, "Worried Man Blues" (YouTube)
Worried Man Blues (WGBH).
Carter Family, "The Cannonball" (YouTube). "1936 radio
transcript" (YouTube). Includes this verse:
Yonder comes the train coming down the track
Carry me away but it ain't gonna carry me back.
Carter Family, "Little Black Train a-Comin" (YouTube). Begins:
There's a little black train a-comin',
set your business right.
There's a little black train a-comin'
and it may be here tonight.

22. 30. Lesley Riddle, "Step By Step: Lesley Riddle Meets the Carter Family: Blues, Country, and Sacred
Songs," Rounder Records, 1993.
"Brownie McGhee and Lesley Riddle" in Lesley Riddle – Black Country Music Pioneer," Lipstick Alley.
"RiddleFest Information," Traditional Voices Group, Burnsville, NC.
"Riddlefest 2012 – Singin' the Blues," North Carolina Humanities Council.
31. For more on the late Mike Seeger:
The New Lost City Ramblers, The Early Years, 1958-1962, Smithsonian Folkways SFW40036, 1991.
The New Lost City Ramblers, Out Standing in Their Field: The New Lost City Ramblers, Vol . 2, 1963-
1973, Smithsonian Folkways SFW40040, 1993.
Various Artists, Close to Home: Old Time Music from Mike Seeger's Collection, 1952-1967, Smithsonian
Folkways SFW40097, 1997.
Mike Seeger, True Vine, Smithsonian Folkways SFW40136, 2003.
Folklore Productions, "Mike Seeger" (bio).
Paul Brown, "Mike Seeger Cleared Paths, Showed Us The Way," NPR All Things Considered, Aug. 8,
2009.
Tony Russell, "Mike Seeger: Versatile singer and multi-instrumentalist at the heart of the US folk music
revival," The Guardian (UK), Aug. 10, 2009.
Ben Sisario, "Mike Seeger, Singer and Music Historian, Dies at 75," New York Times, Aug. 10, 2009.
Ken Hunt, "Mike Seeger: Folk musician who influenced Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead," The
Independent (UK), Aug. 22, 2009. Source for photo of Pete and Mike Seeger backstage at 'Folksong 59'
concert.
Joe Holley, "Mike Seeger; was influential in folk music revival of '60s," Washington Post (via Boston
Globe), Aug. 12, 2009.
32. Little Junior's Blue Flames, "Mystery Train" (YouTube). Sun 192, Memphis Music U-89 (Nov. 1, 1953).
Little Junior's Blue Flames, "Love My Baby" (YouTube). Sun 192, Memphis Music U-88. Guitar part
reused on Presley's version of "Mystery Train."
Elvis Presley, "Mystery Train" (YouTube). Sun 223 (1955). Scotty Moore on guitar.
See "Sam Phillips, Imperfectly Perfect!!" (YouTube, @4:25).
Stewie, Mudcat Café Thread #18875, Msg #189508, March 4, 2000.
Cites the notes on "Mystery Train" by Hank Davis (no relation) and Colin Escott in the Sun Blues Years
box set.
"Mystery Train" (Wikipedia).
"Pat Hare" (Wikipedia).
33. Assorted Trains:
Michael Gray, "Ghost Trains of Mississippi," Weekend Telegraph (UK), 2004. Posted on earlyblues.com
site.
Max Haymes, Railroadin' Some: Railroads in the Early Blues, book offered through the earlyblues.com
site.
The Band, "Mystery Train." From Moondog Matinee (my personal favorite).
Chet Atkins and Stanley Jordan, "Mystery Train" (YouTube). A young Jordan as a hot guitar picker, in
1990. Note how Chet begins the phrase "It's sixteen coaches long" on the last half beat of the second
bar.
Vince Gill, James Burton, Ricky Skaggs, and Albert Lee, "Mystery Train" (YouTube). Live at Martyrs,
Chicago, June 25, 2010. Their solos (particularly Gill @3:17) are none too shabby.
James Burton and Ricky Nelson, "Ricky Nelson and James Burton Playing Acoustic Guitar " (You Tube).
Ricky's musical segment on a 1958 episode of Ozzie and Harriet. How Burton paid the bills when he
was young.
The Golden Nuggets, "Gospel Train" (YouTube), 1973, reissued as track #19 on the CD enclosed with
Oxford American magazine, Nov. 2011, Issue 75, their Oxford American Southern Music CD #13. A
decade after the Peter, Paul & Mary hit "This Train," the Golden Nuggets give its gospel source a
'chunka-chunk' rhythm that anticipates Washboard Sam's take on "Mystery Train." See also John
Hammond's driving version of "This Train."

23. Hank C. Burnette, "Mystery Train" (YouTube). With an extended appreciation of Scotty Moore by
Burnette.
Johnny Burnette, "The Train Kept a-Rollin" (YouTube). A hot '45 in 1956.
Mississippi Fred McDowell "The Train I Ride" (YouTube). With a biographical note by Cub Koda, All
Music Guide.
Billy Branch and Lurrie Bell, "The Train I Ride" (YouTube). Live in Germany at the 1982 American Folk
Blues Festival.
Sonny Terry and Woody Guthrie, "Train Blues" (YouTube).
Mississippi Fred McDowell, "Freight Train Blues" (YouTube).
Janis Joplin, "Long Black Train Blues."
Meade Lux Lewis, "Honky Tonk Train Blues," 1929 (YouTube). The original recording by the Chicago
boogie-woogie pianist, 1905-1964.
Meade Lux Lewis, "Honky Tonk Train," live in 1959 (YouTube).
34. See Playing for Change: Episodes: Episode 12, "Mystery Train".
Playing for Change: Locations: New Orleans, Louisiana.
Playing for Change: Musicians: Washboard Chaz.
Playing for Change: Musicians: Roberto Luti.
Playing for Change: "Playing for Change Explained."
Azizi, Mudcat Café Thread #123550, Msg #2721825, Sept. 11, 2009.
Azizi, Mudcat Café Thread #123550, Msg #2721829, Sept. 11, 2009.
Azizi, Mudcat Café Thread #123550, Msg #2721901, Sept. 11, 2009.
35. Jean Ritchie has contributed hundreds of posts to Mudcat Café over the years, including this charming
observation:
kytrad, Mudcat Café Thread #119547, Msg #2598185, March 26, 2009.
36. Six Degrees Records, "Issa Bagayogo."
Six Degrees Records, Tassoumakan (2004).
Putamayo Records, African Blues (2012).
Putamayo Records, "Djigui."
Heard on John Gilbreath's KBCS-FM program "The Caravan," Tuesday, June 5th, 2012, 11:11 am. John
Gilbreath also hosts the "Jazz Theater" program on KEXP-FM. He is the Executive Director of Earshot
Jazz.
37. See"Jorge Drexler Meets Berklee," Berklee College of Music Signature Series, Jan. 20, 2011.
"Jorge Drexler Promo 2" (Vimeo). From Berklee Studio Sessions, Jan. 20, 2011.
"Jorge Drexler in Boston," account from local blog.
"Berklee, Televisión Mexiquense Start Latin Music Television Series," Berklee College of Music, June
01, 2011.
Freedom Riders disembarking in the deep South, 1961.
38. Jorge Drexler, "Musician Jorge Drexler Explores
the 'Darkness'," interview with Debbie Elliott,
NPR All Things Considered, March 10th, 2007.
"Jorge Drexler – Prensa" (his Web site).
"Jorge Drexler" (YouTube channel).
"Jorge Drexler" (Wikipedia).
Jorge Drexler, "EPK Entrevista" (YouTube)
@5:51, Drexler prepares Uruguayan matte tea.
39. Jorge Drexler "El museo de las distancias rotas"
The Uruguayan songwriter Jorge Drexler won the
2004 Oscar for Best Original Song for composing "Al Otro Lado del Río" for Walter Salles's film The
Motorcycle Diaries. Drexler's song "El museo de las distancias rotas" plays over the end credits of the
2009 James Ivory film The City of Your Final Destination, for which he composed the sound track.
40. See Wayne Lovegrove (his MySpace site). Compare the music of the Seattle Guitar Circle and Michael

24. Hedges.
41. Toninho Horta "Bicycle Ride" (YouTube).
Jorge Drexler, "El Museo de Las Distancias Rotas" (YouTube).
Jorge Drexler, Drexler Promo 2 (Vimeo). From Berklee Studio Sessions, Jan. 20, 2011.
42. Toninho Horta, (Wikipedia).
Toninho Horta, Blog Oficial.
"Metheney and Toninho in Rio" (YouTube), (1988). Metheney says Toninho "plays chords all over the
place."
Pat Metheney's Unity Band appears at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley on Sept. 13-16, 2012.
Pat Metheney, "Last Train Home" (YouTube, live in Japan).
Pat Metheney, One Quiet Night.
43. Sabri Ben-Achour, "A Pachyderm's Ditty Prompts An Elephantine Debate," NPR Weekend Edition
Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012.
44. Dante, Purgatorio, book XVII, lines 13-15. Used by Colin Dexter as the epigraph to chap. 27 of his
Inspector Morse novel The Wench is Dead (London: Pan Macmillan, 1990). Dexter quotes the outdated
translation by Lawrence Grant White (New York: Pantheon: 1948), appropriate for Morse. (White's father,
architect Stanford White, was the victim of a sensational murder.) A more recent translation is W.S.
Merwin, Purgatorio (New York: Knopf, 2000).
Robert Hollander recounts the Boccaccio anecdote in his notes on Purgatorio 17.13-18 in Robert and
Jean Hollander, Purgatorio (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 2003). A glowing review of the translation by
the Hollanders is Joan Acocella, "Cloud Nine: A new translation of the Paradiso," The New Yorker, Sept.
3, 2007.
45. Maureen Dowd, "Too Late to Shake That Etch A Sketch." New York Times, Aug. 25, 2012.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Vintage, 1991). Camus wrote the essay in 1942. The
English translation (from the original French) was first published by Penguin in 1955.
46. Ralph Reed Aug. 26, 2012, at the Republican Convention. Democracy Now, Aug. 27, 2012, @101.40.
For more on the Themis database and the Romney campaign, see:
Adele Stan, "Religious Right's Ralph Reed Field-Tests Plan for Beating Obama," AlterNet, July 9, 2012.
Adele Stan, "Right and Righter: Ron Paul and Ralph Reed," interview on In Deep radio show, July 14,
2012, @26:09.
History Commons, "Profile: Millennium Marketing."
Ed Pilkington, "Koch brothers: Secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind," The
Guardian (UK), Nov. 7, 2011.
Peter Henderson, "Kochs help Republicans catch up on technology" Reuters, San Francisco, May 17,
2012.
Nick Carey, "Wisconsin recall tests conservatives' ground game," Reuters, Oconomowoc, WI, June 1,
2012.
Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini Partil, "Inside Koch World," Politico, June 15, 2012.
47. In David Antin, Tuning (New York: New Directions, 1984), pp. 141-42.
For more on David Antin's talk poems:
David Antin, "Talking to Discover," Alcheringa, New Series, Vol. 2 No. 2 (1976), pp. 112-119. Reprinted
in Jerome Rothenberg & Diane Rothenberg, Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an
Ethnopoetics (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), pp. 450-61.
Stephen Fredman, "David Antin's Talk Poems," in his Poet's Prose: The Crisis in American Verse, 2nd
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 137-142.
"Talking And Thinking: David Antin In Conversation With Hazel Smith And Roger Dean," Postmodern
Culture, Vol.3 No. 3 (May, 1993).
48. My brother Frank's folk records, his fierce flatpicking (he plugged a hollow-bodied Guild into the amp),
and his gruff voice full of cigarette smoke were endlessly fascinating to me. When I was still in junior
high school, we'd work out songs together from his Sing Out Reprints and listen to the Kingston Trio and
Peter Paul & Mary and Gibson & Camp and Dave Van Ronk and the Limelighters (his favorite group)
and Joan Baez and Dylan. That I learned on these songs to become a fingerpicker myself (searching for

25. the notes that the studio musicians added), and eventually a songwriter and a folklore student, is due
entirely to Frank, who introduced me to the urban Folk Revival before he headed out to spend a couple
of decades as a street musician. "Golden Vanity" by the Chad Mitchell Trio and "Santy Anno" by the
Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem were two of the first songs that I ever heard Frank play (see footnote
[15]). When I found out while doing research for this article that Paul Clayton had recorded early
versions of both tunes clear back in 1954, I immediately thought to tell him.
49. From the section "Recordings" in "Tom Dooley (Song)" (Wikipedia):
Paul Clayton, a singer-songwriter and folklorist, recorded "Tom
Dooley" (as "Tom Dula") on Bloody Ballads: British and American
Murder Ballads for Riverside Records in 1956.
See Mudcat Café, Thread #20457, Msg #215336.
Stefan Wirz, "Paul Clayton: Discography."
Mudcat Café, Thread #23981, Msg #2489375. "Tom Dooley didn't kill
Laura Foster?!?"
Mudcat Café, Thread #48348, Msg #730492. Paul Clayton's Bloody
Ballads: British and American Murder Ballads.
Paul Slade, "Infectious: Tom Dooley," p. 13.
Describes the role of folksingers and songcatchers Frank and Ann Warner, who recorded Frank Proffitt's
version of the song in 1938, and passed it along to John and Alan Lomax.
Chuck Shuford, "Tom Dula: The Murder That Sold 10,000 Guitars," Daily Yonder, April 24, 2008.
The Kingston Trio attributed their version of "Tom Dooley" to Frank Proffitt:
...a North Carolina farmer and musician (Proffitt also knew, and later recorded, a longer version, too).
His version of the song became accessible beyond the local mountain communities when song
collectors Frank and Anne Warner visited the North Carolina mountains in 1938 and Proffitt played the
balled for them. Alan Lomax published that version, omitting one verse, in a 1947 collection entitled
Folk Song U.S.A.
The Trio claims to have first heard the song performed by a long forgotten folk singer auditioning at
the Purple Onion nightclub in San Francisco.
Peter J. Curry, "Tom Dooley:The Ballad That Started The Folk Boom."
Disputes the identity of that "long forgotten folk singer" (see "The Unknown Singer Theory"). My money
would be on Paul Clayton, but Dave Guard said he heard "Tom Dooley" performed by The Folksay Trio,
who became The Tarriers (Erik Darling, Bob Carey, and Alan Arkin).
By the way, Frank Profitt famously said "I'd like to be able to play the banjo like Earl Scruggs, and then
not." See Mudcat Café, Thread 24172, Msg 3068652.
50. For the quotes from Dylan's 1965 album and song Highway 61 Revisited, see Bob Dylan, Writings and
Drawings by Bob Dylan (New York: Knopf Borzoi Books, 1973), pp. 181-2, 196.
51. Max Reinhart, "Foamy fun at Mentor High School band camp" Willoughby, OH News-Herald, Fri. Aug.
17, 2012.
As the band members prepared for the showdown – some with a can in each hand, some with a water
gun filled with shaving cream – junior saxophonist Quinton Harrison conspired with his friends. "We're
going to try and get everyone," he said. "But I'm especially gunning for the trumpets." Take that for
thinking you could distract Dante... (see [44]).

26. Fighting Cardinal Marching Band Camp Shaving Cream Showdown, Mentor, Ohio.
Photo by Max Reinhart, Willoughby News-Herald, Aug. 17, 2012. [51]
You can catch Hank Davis performing at open mics around Puget Sound.
To read more of Hank's articles, see his Author's page.