:51:22
He was playing at some party or something
and it was like a whole different guy.
:51:26
You hear those stories
about the blues men...
:51:27
who go out to the crossroads
and sell their soul to the devil...
:51:30
and come back,
all of a sudden able to do stuff...
:51:32
Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson,
that whole mythology.
:51:36
It was one of those kind of deals, almost.
:51:38
When he left Minneapolis
he was just average.
:51:40
There was five, six other guys
doing the same thing.
:51:43
When he came back he was doing Woody...
:51:45
and he was doing Van Ronk
and he was fingerpicking.
:51:48
He was playing cross harp,
and this is a matter of a couple of months.
:51:51
I mean, this is not like
he was gone a year or anything.
:51:54
He was gone a couple of months
and apparently whatever he got into...
:51:57
he got into so intensely that
he was like a real interesting performer.
:52:01
That's when I went to the crossroads
and made a big deal.
:52:05
You know, like...
:52:09
One night and then
went back to Minneapolis...
:52:13
and it was like, "Hey, where's this guy been?
:52:17
"You've been to the crossroads".
:52:32
I wasn't seeing Woody Guthrie anymore.
:52:34
I was still singing a lot of his songs...
:52:35
but I'd replaced them with
a lot of the other songs, all of a sudden.
:52:39
I kind of went through Woody Guthrie
in a kind of way.
:52:41
But I didn't really want
to go through Woody Guthrie.
:52:43
I didn't want to feel that
it was something just negligible.
:52:47
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie,
I wrote you a song
:52:53
About a funny ol' world that's a-coming
along
:52:59
Seems sick and it's hungry,
it's tired and it's torn