I have a pretty tenacious memory that holds several hundred songs (and I can remember the address where I lived when I was 5 years old), but—

1959, February. I am asked by the recently formed University of Washington educational television station, KCTS Channel 9 (now, our local PBS affiliate), to do a series of half-hour television shows on folk music. I'd done some performing up to this point, but not a heck of a lot. So to inject a little variety into the series (not to mention a considerably prettier face than my own mug), I asked Patti McLaughlin to do the shows with me. This way, rather than me sitting there lecturing between songs, we could discuss the songs between us and sing examples of what we were talking about. The Powers That Be at KCTS agreed.

The shows had to be live, because in 1959 videotape machines were about the size of a desk, used tapes that looked more like reels of 35 mm. movie film, and the machine cost about $50,000. KCTS couldn't afford one, and the only one in town was owned by KING-TV.

In one of the early shows, Patti and I were demonstrating British Island songs and ballads that had migrated to the United States and how they had "folk processed." I sang "Binnorie," followed by Patti singing "Bow Down." Patti then sang "The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies," which I knew, but she had already learned a new song for the show, so for an American version, I learned "The Gypsy Davy."

When my turn came, I launched into "The Gypsy Davy," got to about the third verse, and blanked out! So while I groped for the words, I played the tune on the guitar (I was accompanying it with a "Carter Family scratch," so that worked okay, and by the time the next verse was due, I had the words again. WHEW!!

But talk about PANIC!

"Ballads and Books" was a great break. On the strength of having done the series, I was getting requests for concerts and such, and I was now singing regularly three nights a week at Seattle's second—but nicest—coffee house, frequented by local folk music enthusiasts, and often by Seattle's "after show crowd."

I had just learned "The Flying Dutchman" off Rafael Boguslav's "Songs of a Village Garret" record. I included it in a set of sea songs one evening.

This was a case of "I knew he was a folk singer when he spent fifteen minutes introducing a three minute song!"

I did a long, gabby riff on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, rattling on for several minutes, and included a mention of Wagner's opera version of the legend, Der Fliegende Holländer. Then played my guitar intro for the song. And blanked out!

The words just weren't there. Not even written on the ceiling, which I suddenly found myself staring at. Nope! Zip! Nothing! Nada! Blank slate!

So I just had to confess to the audience that I'd blanked out.

Fortunately, they thought it was pretty funny, so I just went on to my next song, and escaped without being lynched!

Don—um—lemme see, now. What's my last name?