Here are some off the top o' my head. Hearing these performances made everything else go away. It was not possible to give anything but complete attention.

Jim Ringer--"California Joe (just the best)

Pete Seeger singing "Bells Of Rhymney" at Newport (After hearing this I knew what I wanted to devote my life to.)

Paddy Tunny's "Lowlands Of Holland"

David Jones' live at a festival version of "Arthur McBride" as broadcast on NPR's Folk Festival USA radio broadcast--1970s.

Lou Killen--"The Flying Cloud"

Jack Elliott singing "Old Shep" - "912 Greens" - "1913 Massacre" - "Tom Joad" at University of Chicago Folk Festival 1961 or '62.

Geoff Muldour---"Brazil" with the Kweskin Band and in the film.

Bukka White--"Panama Limited" for me alone in an alcove of the 2nd floor at Ida Noyes Hall at University Of Chicago Fest.

Roscoe Holcomb in that same alcove a different year tuning my guitar to an open chord, taking out his knife, and fretting with it while singing

Bob Gibson singing "No More Cane On The Brazos"

Paul Clayton singing "The Shanty Boy On The Big Eau Claire" in a guest set at the Sunday afternoon hootenanny at Chicago's Gate Of Horn---and later telling me where to find it. 1959

Bob Atcher singing "tying Knots In The Devil's Tail" at the first U. of Chicago Folk Festival in '61.

Odetta and Larry Mohr's duet version of "Santy Ano"

The blind singer Emery Denoyer singing any of his ballads of the American lumber camps in the early 20th century.

Wade Hemsworth singing "The Land Of The Shining Birch Tree"

Cisco Houston singing "East Texas Red" - "Doby Bill" - "The Colorado Trail" - "The Girl In The Wood"

Vivian Richman singing "The Captain On The Coast Of Maine" on a Folkways album. BUT there was no mention of the song in the notes, on the jacket, on the disc label, or anywhere else. After all the songs were done, there was this song -- to end the LP.

Horton Barker singing "The City Four Square" and "At he Foot Of Yonders Mountain" on his Folkways LP that Sandy Paton recorded.

Leadbelly doing "Fannin Street" (unbelievable!)

Tom Paley singing and picking "Railroad Blues" at the 1962 U. of Chicago Folk Fest - 1962 I think

Marc Silber sitting on a table and singin "San Francisco Bay Blues" in Ida Noyes Hall at the first U. of Chi. Folk Festival.

93 year old Paul Durst singing his hobo and Wobbly songs, and telling of his life into my tape recorder at Pete Laibundguth's Fret Shop on 57th Street in Chicago--in the old Artist Colony.--(These were cold water store fronts left over from The World's Colombian Exposition.) December 12, 1961

Blind street singer Lee O.B. Quiggins singing "You Take Care Of The Bumble Bee" into my tape machine in his Evansville, Indiana hotel room--1962.

prisoner Charlie Butler singing "Diamond Joe" for Library of Congress Archive Of Folk Song collector Duncan Emrich in 1937.

Those are a few of 'em that come to mind now.

Art Thieme