I interviwed Burl Ives for The Guardian [London & Manchester] of 7 Sep 1977 when he was over here for the Brighton Folk Festival, and found him one of the most charming, modest and co-operative of all my interviewees. One of the things he said in answer to one of my questions was, "I don't regard myself predominantly as a singer or an actor; I believe that actors regard me as a singer and singers as an actor." I also wrote his obit for the same paper some years later [15 April 1995], in which I quoted his story in Wayfaring Stranger of his dutiful visits to the Met Opera during his early days in NY: "One day while standing through a Wagnerian opera, the Almighty sent a ray of light through my skull, and I realised, 'This stinks'."