The good thing about the Friday evening time frame of the Folk music program was that it didn't clash with my athletic schedule at all. My social life at the time was zilch anyhow, so I was able to fill that time in with something exciting and meaningful to me. I studied for and received my 3rd class radio-telephone license from the FCC - became an engineer and substitute News Announcer (meaning, I read the AP dispatches as they came over the "wire" teletype apparatus). Braughton was quite versed in his depth of knowledge about Woody Guthrie and other Dust Bowl Days balladeers. The station had an extensive collection of rural southern blues guitarists and singers, plus many of the bluegrass bands that were becoming popular at the time on college stations in the early sixties. Besides the older singers like "Leadbelly" or Hudie Ledbetter, many new young guitarists beside Bob Dylan were getting recorded: Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Phil Ochs. Judy Collins, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and a young fellow from the Boston-Cambridge scene, Tom Rush. The management of Rush and Phil Ochs discovered our program, and did a listener survey. They contacted us and gave us their results. We had an estimated audience of 200,000 people in the New York Metro area. Next thing I knew, Tom Rush was a live guest in our studio. The guitar he had at the time was an Epiphone Texan. He'd play slide style and sing old Bukka White blues. I loved the sound of that guitar! In the summer of 1967, I went shopping for a steel string guitar in a store in mid-Manhattan. There, on the rack, at a price I could afford was my Texan... |
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For more photos of my guitars and
(eventually) rhymn toy collection
go to The GALLERY
