on another list Tony Saletan wrote:

In the 1940s, Margo taught me and my schoolmates (at The Walden School in New York City) dances and songs from her heritage and valuable collection. She played piano to accompany the dances, and I'm aware that my own piano style when accompanying dances shows that strong early influence. I don't remember her playing banjo. And I thought she came from further south than Ohio.

My cousin Gene Saletan, who danced in Margo's American Square Dance Group, wrote me: "I don't know where she was born, but I'll lay odds that she never played a banjo at the ASDG. Never even saw her pick one up. Was she really a cousin of Rufus Crisp? As far as I know, she was a grade-school teacher only in that she would come around to teach folk songs and dances in some private schools...Other details? The musical instrument she played for the ASDG was always the piano, and always with a cigarette dangling on her lip. Her favorite drink was a Manhattan, and although we were under-age by today's rules, we often joined her at a bar after a performance or after one of those Saturday night Open Houses. I remember sitting at a table with her and Leadbelly, with him talking in that rhyming way he had and calling Margo a great lady. She joined the WACs during WWII."

Take a look at Ray Lawless' book "Folksingers and Folksongs in America" which has a page on Dick Wilder who joined the ASDG in 1941. It says, "Miss Mayo at that time was a teacher of education at the Mills School for Nursery, Kindergarten, and Primary Teachers."

More recently Robert Cantwell wrote, in his book on the folk revival ("When We Were Good") "...the folksong revival was becoming in schools and camps a folk revival. Margot (sic) Mayo continued her emphasis on folksong and dance at the Woodward School in Brooklyn." You may want to follow his footnotes to a couple of articles in Sing Out!: Margot (sic) Mayo, "Five Years of Folk Song Favorites," Sing Out! 12 (April-May 1962), 37-39. See also "Folk Music Goes to School," Sing Out! 12 (February-March 1962), 5-6.

One more clue to Margo's geographical background: There's a comment by Ben Stein in The Strathspey Server about the walking (vs. buzz-step) swing: "The southern mountain dances that I learned in the early 1940's from Margo Mayo, who was brought up in the Kentucky mountains..."

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I finally pulled out my father's copy of "The American Square Dance" (Sentinel Books, 1943). It has a little note about the author that opens "Margot [sic] Mayo a native of Texas...."

~ Becky in Tucson