Now, THERE is one of those wild-eyed coincidences, Frank, that you should mention Sam Hinton!

I first met Sam Hinton at the first Berkeley Folk Festival I attended in 1960, where he MCed pretty much the whole thing. I heard, and had a chance to meet and talk with, some great people—Peggy Seeger and Ewan McColl, John Lomax Jr., Lightnin' Hopkins, and several others, including running into Sandy Paton again. He'd been a busy lad since I last saw him in Seattle in 1954. And Sam Hinton. The concerts were great and the workshops were a real learning experience. I attended several more Berkeley festivals, and Sam was MCing most of the events, along with doing a lot of singing.

But—What makes this a surprising coincidence is that a few days ago, I got one of those notices from Amazon that said, "Our records show that in the past you bought this, this, and this. So we thought you might be interested in this." And the item was a CD of some forty-five songs sung by Sam Hinton.

The mail just came, the CD arrived, and I just opened it. I wanted to do a quick check of Mudcat, then listen to the CD.

And there you are, talking about Sam Hinton!

What a blast!!

Don Firth