I believe it was in 1961 that I was attending one of the many workshops at the Berkeley Folk Festival at U. C. Berkeley, one of the workshops moderated by the inimitable Sam Hinton, when a young woman in the front row who spoke with a pleasant Scottish "burr" in her voice asked a number of questions of the panel. After several questions from her and a bit of conversation back and forth, Sam Hinton said, "It's obvious to me that you know more about Scottish folk songs than we here on the panel!" And he invited her to come up and join the panel, which she did.

She was gracious, pleasant, and very knowledgeable.   The panel and those attending wound up directing most of their questions to her.

This was the first time I had heard of—heard and saw—Jean Redpath.

A few years later, she had occasion to visit Judy Flenniken in Seattle, a young woman I was singing with frequently. I don't know how she and Judy became acquainted, but Judy had a small "songfest" at her father's home and that's when I had a chance to meet her.

She has sung here in Seattle a couple of times at the auditorium of the Museum of History and Industry (which has served as a venue for many folk music concerts, including Peggy Seeger and Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger alone, Greg Brown, Gordon Bok, and others, along with several local singers) to full houses.

There is a great vacancy in the world of folk music now that Jean Redpath is gone. . . .

She was an international treasure.

Don Firth