JOHN SEBASTIAN

vocalist-guitarist with folk-rock group the Lovin' Spoonful

“Well, let’s see… You know what’s funny? The first 33 RPM record that I bought, I still have not been able to locate because I don’t remember what it was called or who the artists were. It was a jazz album. It was a kind of a cool jazz album that I bought – maybe I was 13 or 14 years old – and I thought it was very kind of beatnik-y.

“Things really started to click for me when I heard ‘Folsolm Prison Blues’ and tried to find a copy of it. This was when I realized that more than one person can cut the same song. And that the version that I found wasn’t the cool version that I’d heard by Johnny Cash. It was by the Fendermen, instead. And that was a good lesson to learn.

“But I’d have to say, though, that what moved me earliest was people like Josh White and Harry Belafonte, who kind of led the way into folk music for me.”