For the folkies on the Cafe, noting the death of Bill Staines on Sunday. A week ago, he announced his retirement from touring at age 74, due to the effects of metastatic prostate cancer. Over a 57-year career, beginning in 1960's Cambridge coffeehouses, Bill logged over two million touring miles, almost all driving, as detailed in his 2003 book, The Tour.
Two add just a smidgen of mando content, I took my Stahl mandola onstage at one of Bill's last performances, last September at our Turtle Hill Folk Festival in Rochester, and played back-up while he sang one of his best-known songs, Place In the Choir:
All God's critters got a place in the choir,
Some sing low, and some sing higher;
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire,
Some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got.
To me, one of the most loved voices in folk music; I'll miss him.
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