Thank you, Dale. I hadn't seen the Times obit, nor had I explored the Missouri web site.

Let me offer a story Max told me when we went with him to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to record his songs. He was selling refrigeration equipment and supplies throughout the Ozarks, visiting restaurants and bars, staying in hotels at night. A friendly fellow, he would log a bit of time in the evenings at some local watering hole, chatting with the folks he met. They'd swap yarns and jokes, of course, and he probably even heard a song or two along the way. He enjoyed the songs and began to learn them

At that time, he was building a collection of handguns. Someone told him about a set of matched .44s for sale in Oklahoma somewhere, so he drove over there and paid $400 for them (a lot of money then, but probably an incredible bargain in today's market). On the way home, he said to himself, "Jeez! I can't afford this hobby!" So he sold the guns and bought a tape recorder and some tapes. At the time, he was just learning the songs for his own pleasure. He would record them, learn them, then record over them on the tape, to save money. When he met Mary Parler and Vance Randolph, they hollered at him, "For God's sake, don't do that! Save everything you collect!" That was when he began to build his great collection of field recordings. With each tape on his shelf was a small composition book of the transcribed texts, all written out by hand, and under each text a note: "Sang for me on (such and such a date) by (name of singer)." As his collection grew, so did his knowledge of the material he was gathering.

Beats the heck out of collecting guns, doesn't it?

Sandy