Watch as Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary discusses when he first met Dylan while working at The Gaslight Cafe and which Woody Guthrie tune Dylan adapted that led to Stookey telling Albert Grossman to come see him play.
Unfortunately, this is only partially correct -- Woody's version of "Buffalo Skinners" does NOT contain the funny (spoken) part which Noel "Paul" Stookey correctly remembers as being the likely "model" for Dylan's own "Story Of East Orange", of which a recording exists on the December 22, 1961, tape recorded at Bonnie Beecher's apartment in Minneapolis, MN. This spoken part probably originates from a recording by The Almanac Singers, "State Of Arkansas" (Lee Hays, lead vocal, Woody Guthrie, guitar, vocal, Pete Seeger, banjo, vocal, Millard Lampell & Peter Hawes, vocals), recorded July 07, 1941 at Reeves Sound Studios, New York, and released as part of "Sod-Buster Ballads" as General 5019-A. "Then I got me a job on a farm. But I didn't like the work, nor the food, nor the farmer, nor his wife, nor none of his children. So I went up to him one day and I told him, ""Mister, I'm quittin' this job, and you can just pay me off right now."" He says to me, ""OK, son, if that's the way you feel about it."" And he handed me a mink skin. I told him, I said, ""Hell, brother, I don't want this thing, I want my money."" He says to me, says, ""Son, that's what we use for currency down here in Arkansas."" So I took it and I headed for a saloon to see if I could get me a pint of drinkin' whisky. Put my mink skin on the bar, and durned if the bartender didn't throw me a pint. An' he picked up my mink skin, and he blowed the hair back on it, and he handed me three 'possum hides and fourteen rabbit skins for change..." www.lyrics.com/.../The+Almanac.../State+of+Arkansas
