Got curious and went looking to see if I could establish some further chronology.

(Excuse the indulgence, those who feel we've already spent too much time on the nitty-gritty, but this is fascinating to unsnarl...much of this I'm learning for the first time; I had no idea the song had such a wide circulation!)

The Kingston Trio recording seems to have been "Rider," credited to Shane/Reynolds/Henske, on their July 1963 Sunny Side LP. (Please correct me if this is not the song; I haven't managed to hear it to be sure. At any rate mid-'63 seems to be the earliest possible date they could have recorded the song, which is what I was trying to establish.)

But pretty certainly Judy Henske is their link to the song. If the dates I found are correct, she issued a single, "I Know You Rider"/"Love Henry," on January 1, 1963.

Now. Did Joan Baez did hear the song from me at that party in 1959? The more I think of it the more possible that seems, because that was a hot item in my repertoire then, and I was singing it everywhere I went. If so, the most direct transmission would be if Judy heard it from Joan. Or there could have been some intermediaries.

By the way, Judy Henske's version is pretty different, only uses the first and last verses of my version, adding a couple of other floating blues verses. The Trio version is similar but uses yet other loan verses.

Interestingly, I happened to run across the Martin/Neil lyrics and they use a verse version I hadn't remembered, one I at first revised, and later discarded:

                Lovin' you, baby's, just as easy as rollin' off a log...

So maybe they heard an early version, like Tossi Aaron's for example.

Also in the course of searching I found a statement that Tossi used this as her "signature song." She apparently called it "Rider."    I wonder if she, and the Trio after her, shortened the title out of some anxiety whether I might have copyrighted it as "I Know You Rider." Could that also have been why it was left off the Baez album?

Tossi, if she's still living, or her husband Lee Aaron, might know more. Tossi, are you out there?

Bob