Thanks, Kendall. You remind me of a couple of things.

This too is not telling anything about Gordon "Out of school." This was an admission that he made in a workshop that I did many years ago at the Eisteddfod. It was a "singing" workshop... the only one that I ever hosted. I have never taken singing lessons, or ever even felt tempted to. That's not to knock them... it's just an experience and knowledge that I don't have. Gordon and Sandy & Caroline were in the workshop and the first thing I asked people to do was to talk about who they first imitated as singers (or at least sang along with and were influenced by.) I started out doing Blue Suede Shoes and talked about Carl Perkins. I could as easily have done Blue Monday, and talked about Fats Domino. When it was Gordon's turn, I imagine that most people thought he'd say that he really learned to sing by singing along with some old, crusty lobster fisherman sitting on a rocky coastline in Maine. It's understandable to me that people who are well loved as musicians or singers cultivate a persona and never let a crack appear. It's a way to keep your own life private. I really got a kick out of Gordon (who has a wonderful sense of humor.) One of his first influences? Perry Como. Perry Como? Why not Dean Martin? Funny thing is, Gordon shares that in common with Elvis, who acknowledged Perry Como as one of his main images. How weird that two singers as different as Gordon and Elvis could have the same influence. I admired Gordon for that. What could be less self-aggrandizing at a folk festival than saying that Perry Como was an early influence? Maybe Margaret MacArthur saying her first influence as a singer was Annette Funicello.

Coming up with funny lines that can destroy a song has to be a natural, adult hangover of making up silly satires when we were kids. For many years, I sang with Luke Faust and one of our very favorite songs we did as a duet was Mary Of The Wild Moore, which we learned from a Blue Sky Boys recording. There is a very dramatic line in the song where Mary's Father comes down and opens the front door of his house in the morning to find Mary dead from lieing (... how in the world do you spell lieing?) on the doorstep in the cold all night. As the song says, "with the child still alive, closely clasped in its dead Mother's arm." How did the old man respond to this horrific scene. The line says, "In anguish he tore his gray hair." I was fooling around one night and sang it "In anguish he tore his gray shirt." That was it. I guess we were in a silly mood like you, David and Gordon, Kendall. Somehow, it seemed like the funniest image imagineable. Kinda like the biblical phrase, "Thou hast caused me to rend my garments." It took forever to be able to sing that song with a straight face again. What a stupid point in the song to go into hysterics! I can sing the song straight now, but I must admit that the thought does cross my mind, when I get to that line...

Jerry