- Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day." I always preferred Holly to Elvis.
- Camping with some nerd buddies at a lake. Getting a radio station that faded in and out. And hearing, for the first time, Little Richard's "Jenny Jenny". Wow.
- In the Army, a buddy playing me a Nina Simonne record and hearing, for the first time, the way her piano solos flirted with Bach.
- The Beatles Sgt Pepper album. Incredible.
- Ray Charles playing organ with the Basie band on an album called Genius + Soul, another Army experience. One Mint Julep.
- In the Army, I subscribed to SING OUT magazine, which followed me to Germany. Saw an ad for Ramblin' Jack Elliott, an unknown to me at the time, singing Guthrie songs on an album. Pete Seeger said he sounded more like Guthrie than Guthrie. Intrigued, I ordered it. Became and remains one of my all-time favs.
- First time I heard Theodore Bikel sing Russian gypsy songs. Wow.
- In Berkeley before I joined the Army, drinking beer with a friend who left Cal Tech with me, getting maudlin listening to Sinatra's "Only the Lonely" album.
- First time I heard Weill/Brecht's Mahagonny. You cannot help a dead man. Another all-time favorite.
- In a cabin in Utah, poor radio reception again, hearing Canned Heat for the first time. Only later would I realize these were the same UCLA grad students I used to hear at the Ash Grove in various packages, from Eastern gypsy music to bluegrass to blues. Turning pro, they chose blues but they could have done anything. They were all musicology students.
- My private concert from Ramblin' Jack Elliott while helping him set up sound for a gig I arranged after his Winnebago broke down in Portland.
- Obsessing on Little Walter when I was feeling down on my luck, the blues and the booze.
I'm sure there are more. These come quickly to mind. Not bad.
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