For a brief period in the early 1950's in Topanga Canyon California on Will Geer's ranch,, I was one of Woody's "pickin' buddies". Some of his song lyrics had tunes that he actually sang in those days, notably, "At My Window Sad and Lonely", which I never forgot.

I knew Woody at a transitional time where he was becoming more ill and we all thought it was alcohol.

One of his favorite songs was the Cajun, "Jolie Blonde".

He took a dim view of his
imitators. He thought that people should be who they are and not his clone.

Unfortunately, there is so much that is "lost" of Woody and I sense that the more he is lionized, the less we will really know about him.

These early recordings and notes are invaluable, though.

The one aspect about his performance that I take with me is that Woody was the same guy on the stage as he was off. He could meld his everyday conversation into a performance.

Sometimes, though, he didn't like to talk at all. He just wanted to communicate through music. There were periods where we didn't talk, we just picked.

He lived in a different universe where the common social amenities didn't apply. A lot of this was due to the fact that he knew what was happening to him. This gave an urgency to his expression writing piles of poems and drawings on blank accounting books, some of them mercifully saved, and the way he sang as if every song were an important performance. Woody never phoned it in around me.

Frank Hamilton