I met him several times during the last few years of his life, at concerts and festivals, mostly. I have tape of him at the Smithsonian Festival singing "Old Abe Lincoln" (the song Jon quote upthread), "Joe Hill," and "The House I Live In," all in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol (!).

He also appeared at the Folklife Festival in Seattle several times after he moved back to the Northwest.

My memory of him was that he was always very accessible and happy to talk to a young admirer who must have been asking the same questions that he had answered hundreds of times before. He knew that he had accomplished something with his music, but he wasn't one of those folks who wantede everybody to know how important he was.

Toward the end of his life, he got caught up with some kind of mystical thing that I never quite understood -- I never asked about it, becasue I really didn't want to know. But a few of his last songs were influenced by that philosophy.

Alas, I was out of town when he died, so I missed his memorial.