Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

I came from an intellectual family. Most were doctors, preachers, teachers, businessmen. My grandfather was a small businessman. His father was an abolitionist doctor, and his father was an immigrant from Germany.

This banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.

Sometimes you find an old tune so good you can use it several times for different purposes.

I came along and was a teenager in the Depression, and nobody had jobs. So I went out hitchhiking, when I met a man named Woody Guthrie. He was the single biggest part of my education.

I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.