For someone who has made his living off a guitar style he invented, Doc Watson has been extremely generous in showing it to others. For the first few years he stayed with me, which was whenever he came to LA, he allowed me to tape him in informal pickin’ sessions where anyone I wanted could show up, gape and learn (as long as I wanted them there).

I “met” Janis Joplin, for the second time, at the Cabale, a coffee house on, I think, San Pedro Street in Berkeley, sometime in the winter of 1963. I put “met” in quotes because I didn’t really have an exchange with her, at least at first, since she was onstage and I was in the audience. However, by the end of the night I was playing backup guitar for her, an honor I bestowed on myself with a stunt of real musical sleaze.

The first time I remember meeting Janis Joplin was in the winter of 1963 during a dope break on the sidewalk outside The Cabale, a Berkeley coffee house where my bluegrass band, The Ridgerunners, was playing. This was before she was known to more than a tiny handful of people who themselves had just met her.