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I finally got up the nerve to introduce myself to Cass at The Dugout, an infamous watering hole next to
The Bitter End. Or maybe she introduced herself to me,I don't remember. But I do remember that first night
we met. She said: "We're going to try and drink each other under the table aren't we? So, let's get under
the table and drink." And that's what we did - under the red checkered table cloth in the sawdust with a
bottle of Jack Daniels Green Label. See, after the tourists went home all the performers went over to The Dugout.
Yeah, there were the up-and-coming comedians like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen and Joan Rivers and folkies and poets.
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Poets ... oh there was this weird little guy in a tweed cap, and those gloves with no fingers in them and
an army greatcoat that dragged behind him. He looked a bit like Dopey from the seven dwarfs. And a satchel
under his arm full of manuscript paper and he'd go to every table just dropping off pieces of paper.
"The answer my friend is blowing in the wind." Blow it out your - Get out of here.
You're creepy kid - creepy!
Cass liked Dylan's stuff right off. Like Cassandra, she could look ahead and see it coming.
She was always saying: "If this is where we are now, where will we be in five years?" I never gave it that much thought, Cass. I'd be happy to know where I'll be tomorrow.
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Cass and I kicked around the Village keeping each other very entertained until the fall of 1963 when we both
hooked into the "Hoot Tours". The Hootenanny tours were a spin-off from
the TV series. You'd go out, six to ten acts on a bus,
hit the circuit. Like the old Allen Freed rock and roll shows. We played some of the same venues.
That fall The Big Three headed north, up through Chicago. The Halifax Three? We were on a tour,
down through the deep south headed for Texas. The Journeymen were on that tour. Next-to-closing act,
making fifteen hundred a week. We were on just after an outfit called the
Geezenslaw Brothers!
Three hundred a week.
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Hey, I didn't mind - it was regular pay and one night in Memphis while I was
singing a ballad the girls in the balcony started to scream. In Elvis' home town yet. I think
John Phillips may have been impressed because, after that, he started inviting me out to smoke his pot
in chicken coops and barns all along the tour route.
John Phillips: great songwriter and an incredible 'arranger'. Very Ivy league: clean cut, Brooks Brothers
suits, Princeton haircut. But he'd been thrown out of Annapolis with the most demerits of any cadet in the
history of the Academy. After that he'd sold cemetery plots.
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John loved to wheel and deal and could sell
himself, his group - anything. He was very cerebral and very, very funny and, above all, a leader. Oh and
very much in love with his new wife Michelle - a pert, gamine like creature from another planet who joined
the tour in Mississippi. I remember the night. She gets on the bus - the ultimate California girl fresh
from a job modeling teen lingerie in New York, walks down the aisle, plants a big kiss on John and they're
off to the hotel. As he passes, John gives me one of these (poke in the ribs) and says; "Isn't she great?
Got to go do it" . Thank you. I really needed to hear that.
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