Sam never told me he met Ed Ricketts. Sam did tell me:

"In 1938 I was studying zoology and I was working mostly with Dr. Raymond Cowles, studying temperature regulation in reptiles and part of the project involved my being out in the desert. And I was out there with a friend named Woody Woodall and we heard that John Steinbeck was visiting the Okie Camp at one of the towns in the California desert. Woody Woodall was a very handsome fellow who certainly would have joined the ranks of well-known scientists had he not been killed in a training accident while he was a Navy aviator in World War II.
        
"Steinbeck was a great hero of mine.   This was before _The Grapes of Wrath_ had been published, but I knew his other works. So, I got up my nerve and went over and introduced myself to him and he introduced me to Woody Guthrie. I had never heard of him. At that time Woody was living, I believe, in Long Beach, California. He had a radio show there, but I never did hear that. I didn't get to know him very well until later. I liked Steinbeck, he was very nice, but Woody was very reserved. It was kind of hard for me to get close to him, but I liked him and admired him. That was the first time I'd heard his songs. At that time I didn't get any sense of the importance of his music. I didn't know he was a composer of children's songs until the records came out in the 50's.   I think I was already beginning to feel better about composed music as opposed to traditional music. I was kind of snooty about it in my early days!   Woody was one of those new "singer-songwriters."

There are recordings of Sam's simultaneous whistling and humming on Sam's epic solo harmonica album "Master of the Diatonic harmonica".

-Adam Miller