Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

Some may find them merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I.

When I got out of school, I spent two years just hitchhiking around. Every time I met some old farmer who could play banjo, I got him to teach me a lick or two. Little by little, I put it together.

Looking back, I think I tried to be too eclectic. Sometimes I'd sing thirty songs, and fifteen of them were not in English.

It's a terrible thing being a patriarch. I don't even have a gray beard. But people keep calling me up for advice.

But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail.

Work in nightclubs was interesting. There were interesting people and places, but by and large, the commercial music experience.