Since my last post I received the Tossi Aaron LP. I also picked up the re-release of Joan Baez's album, and I bought the Lomax's book with the "original" version of the song. First off, thank you Bob and everyone else for turning me on to these things. It's thrilling to hear these early folk albums, and needless to say the book is invaluable. I have a couple further points to make...

Concerning the transmission of the song to the Bay Area folks, my friend Christian Crumlish made this suggestion:

"I would guess the transmission went Baez to Garcia, Weir, Kaukonen (not relying on Janis, who arrived later), because Garcia was known to be envious of Baez and ambitious about equaling her career. If she was singing it, he probably heard it. The Palo Alto coffeehouse scene would account for that transmission."

This seems to make sense to me. The Grateful Dead's first recording of the song predates the known recordings by the Byrds, Big Brother, and Hot Tuna. So while all of those artists were clearly familiar with the song relatively early, the evidence for Garcia's familiarity seems to precede (or at least coincide with) the others'. Though Garcia may very well have found a copy of Tossi Aaron's album. Her version of FENNARIO is very close the the Dead's interpretation--much more so than to Dylan's for instance.

On the other hand, I'm friends with Grateful Dead Hour host David Gans (http://www.trufun.com/), who is friends with Jorma Kaukonen. David forwarded an inquiry from me to Jorma about where he learned the song. Here is Jorma's reply:

"I learned I Know You Rider either at Antioch or NYC sometime in 1960. I just learned songs I liked... I had no idea where they came from.
It's a worthless answer but true."

Not exactly helpful--but far from worthless, and Jorma's answer fits Bob's description of how the song migrated.

I have plenty to say about how all of these versions differ--no two are exactly alike, but I'll save that for a future post if I manage to transcribe all the lyrics.

Bob, you stated in an earlier post:

"Because I feel a strong personal connection to it, part of the intriguing weirdness, for me, has been finding out how far the song has traveled."

In case you didn't know--every contemporary "jam band" (a term I'm not fond of) does I KNOW YOU RIDER--inspired by the Dead's rendition of course. Sting Cheese Incident in particular have made it a live staple. For an extremely thorough--though not necessarily exhaustive--list of official recordings, see Matt Schofield's Grateful Dead Family Discography: http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/I_Know_You_Rider.htm.

Finally, I have a question. It seems overwhelmingly clear that Bob was the one who introduced the song to the people in the late 50s/early 60s folk scene, and the song just spread from there. But one question remains: Who recorded it first, Joan Baez or Tossi Aaron?

Joan Baez's self-titled debut album was released in 1960. The liner notes to the re-release CD--written by Arthur Levy (no relation) in 2001--confirm that the bonus tracks were recorded at the same time as the other songs on the original album. Levy just says the album was recorded in "the summer of 1960" but doesn't give any specific dates. The liner notes to the Baez box set RARE, LIVE & CLASSIC (by Joan herself) don't list a specific date for the recording of the album either, though Levy's liner notes say it was recorded in a single day!

As excited as I was about getting to hear Tossi's album, I was just as excited to finally put a date to the recording--or at least the release of her album. Alas, there is no copyright date anywhere on the album--not on the back cover or on the label. Maddening to say the least. In the liner notes--which are by Tossi herself--she refers to a colleague and writes, "In 1959..." obviously she wouldn't use the word "in" if she was writing that same year, so the writing of the liner notes--and presumably the recording of the album couldn't be earlier than 1960, but it could theoretically be later. On the other hand, Tossi was writing these notes for posterity, and could have written "In 1959" knowing that people would be reading these notes for years to come (as indeed I did in 2007), so 1959 is a remote possibility.

I found a website which lists all of the Prestige International albums from the era: http://www.jazzdisco.org/prestige/folk-cat/a/. Maddeningly again, there is very little date information for any of these albums. The earliest one with a date listed is Dave Von Ronk's FOLKSINGER album from "April 1962." The site doesn't specify if this is the recording or release date. But assuming the albums were released sequentially by catalog number, Tossi's precedes Ronk's. So that places her album somewhere between 1959 at the earliest, and April 1962 at the latest. I'm leaning toward 1960 as the release year, but was Tossi's recorded before Joan's? Finding the true "original" recording is very important to me, so any ideas or further help would be wonderful.

Finally, the notes to the re-release of Joan's album don't offer any information about where she may have learned it, but Tossi says she learned it from "other singers" again supporting Bob's claims.

Eric (now a Mudcat member)

PS. Thanks for the COLD RAIN info Bob--good to cross another one off the list :^)