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his joy and vicarious pleasure when things went well for them.<br />
And I would have described his wonderful talent playing his<br />
banjo and singing, his self-taught skill, his natural ability to draw<br />
in his audience of friends and hold them tightly. I would have<br />
told how one of the great pleasures in life was to sit with friends<br />
some evenings listening to him play and sing. I probably would<br />
have described one night in a secluded beachfront cottage, the<br />
lack of electricity overcome with a few candles, when I heard him<br />
sing for the first time “Sweet Baby James” and found myself<br />
speechless when he finished.<br />
Doubtless I would have mentioned in closing that<br />
oftentimes when the night grew late and he was ready to stop<br />
playing he would sing one final song, The Highwayman, a poem<br />
by Alfred Noyes that had been put to music by Phil Ochs. He<br />
invariably performed it beautifully and we knew then that we<br />
were done.<br />
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,<br />
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,<br />
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,<br />
A highwayman comes riding—<br />
Riding—riding—<br />
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.<br />
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