I just have to tell you.... I'm sitting here home alone inhaling the booklet for this set, and waiting for Hardi to come home so I can play the CD's. We always listen to things together the first time-- it's so seldom we get big chucks of time together, with his work, so I try to make sure we don't go down the music road separately, and that we share the new stuff together. (It's always hard to wait!) So we have a date with Doc later that Hardi doesn't know about yet.

But this booklet. I am about halfway through it and there are tears flowing. I just can't quite put into words, what it means to me as a musician whose earliest exposure was to Doc's music, played by peole who learned from his records just like Doc learned from 78's.... and then later hearing Doc's recorded stuff myself...

Well, to have Holt's wonderful gift of story telling open up for me how Doc came up in the music world and how he was with people from the very beginning... it's so wonderful and so reassuring to see this on the detail level. Doc leaps off these pages just like the stories we tell around here when we get to meet other Mudcatters. It's like he could be any Mudcatter you've ever hooked up with at a Mudcat gathering, in the way he's just folks with everybody.

Reading this not just as a fan, but as a musician.... it's like nothing I've ever done before. It's pow'ful stuff.

~Susan