Bill Crofut, a high school friend, called me from Cambodia one day in 1960, asking me to join him in giving a series of American folk music concerts in several Asian and African countries.  This was for a State Department people-to-people program, and while they sent the New York Philharmonic to Russia, they were satisfied with a banjo player for Laos and Burma.  But Crofut claimed that at his first concert in Cambodia, 10,000 people came and 9,990 walked out. Would I join him for a few months touring?  After all, we had enjoyed singing together occasionally in high school.  My guitar was gathering dust as I tried to make a living as a concert-music composer, so I hesitated.   My friends were less ambivalent.  “A free trip to Asia? Composing  can wait, you’ve got to go, it will only take a few months.”  So I did, and being a performer lasted a dozen years.

–Stephen Addiss, age 84