Well I never thought it would happen, but lo and behold in my email tonight I found a letter from a researcher named Fred Dyer -- the same gentleman who was responsible for the actual research which formed the basis for Song Challenge Number 3!!

He writes:

Dear Amos:

During a web search done for quite a different purpose, I ran across a Mudcat Cafe page with a lyric by you entitled "Fred Dyer's Bees." It seems quite obvious that I am the Fred Dyer referred to (although some of the facts are wrong!). My friends are very impressed that I would have somehow ended up in a song, and I was just wondering, out of sheer curiosity, how you came upon the idea for those lyrics, and the factual material you put in them.

Fred

I responded as follows:

Dear Fred:

This is my moment of truth, my terrible nightmare come true!!

Here's the story:

The Mudcat as you may know, is a community of folklorists and folk musicians and afficianadoes of folk music. It is also a riproaring lot of fun and good talk and creative wackiness. One of the entertainments of the site is the occasional "Song Challenge" thread, in which the "Keeper of the Mudcat Songbook" , a fine sassy Texas lass, cites a recent news article usually with something humorous in it, and challenges any members of the Mudcat to compose a song around the article.

An NPR story describing your research involving gluing transistors onto bees and tracing their peregrinations caught her eye and she posted it as a song challenge, to which I responded with the composition you found, to the the tune of The Big Rock Candy Mountain. At that time, of course, you were not really a living communicating person in my thoughts, but a name in an amusing news story, and since the notion of a humorous composition sort of underlies the whole Song Challenge idea...well, you probably see the picture.

In the course of composing a fanciful flight of doggerel around the news clipping, I took certain liberties which would normally come under the heading of poetic license, which were perfectly normal in the context of the song challenge. But getting an email from you brings home to me the fact that I should not have entitled the song using your name, since there is no basis in truth in the somewhat slippery character I attribute tot he researcher in the song. I have no way of knowing from your post whether your sense of humor extends far enough to forgive this liberty of mine or not. But it might please you to know that your research was the topic not of one song, but of many! Actually, all told, thirteen of them! They are interspersed with a lot of silly dialogue and banter, but if you want a few chuckles about the various flights of fancy so to speak) touched off by this Challenge, you can see them in sequence at

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?ThreadID=17761#172495.

So that's the background. I do want you to know that no personal offense was intended by associating your name in the title of my entry with the exaggerated character I portrayed, who of course does not (I assume) resemble the actual person or his story at all. And if you wish, I will have the name of the song changed so that it makes no reference to you. Alternatively, if you feel comfortable just taking it in the spirit in which it was generated, then we can leave it as it is.

Finally, thanks for a really interesting e-mail!! It's not often I hear back from someone I have scribbled couplets about from a news clipping.

Wishing you ongoing success in your researches,

Amos Jessup

(I will be out of town on business the rest of this week, but will catch up with any response after my return on the 7th).

So there you have it, Challengers!! I hope Fred Dyer turns out to have a good sense of humor, as he seems to have from his letter. More as it develops.

Regards,

A.