C.G.: (continuing with Fritzi Striebel)       One of most encouraging people on this "The Eskin Project" has been Fritzi Striebel -- who moved from Woodstock, NY, many years ago to be closer to her immediate family in Michigan. When John Striebel (1891-1962) was alive their home, Fairfields, in Bearsville, NY was an exciting place for informal and sometimes formal concerts, parties, with performers and visitors from all over the world. (It was especially for me the first time I visited there as a teenager-escapee from Eastman School of Music.) The Striebels maintained their open door policy no matter where they were -- Mexico, California, Canada or Woodstock, NY.

Fritzi Striebel:   One of my best memories of him was when we had traded houses with some friends in North Hollywood. It had a nice roomy yard with a tennis court and one morning we awoke to find a mobile home sitting in it. It was Sam Eskin, of course, and he asked if he couldn't stay there for a week or two while he looked up a lot of folk singers. We were delighted and not only enjoyed Sam, but met a lot of fascinating people that he brought by and who entertained us with guitars and banjos and singing voices of all kinds! The most interesting was an old chap of about ninety, who was in, or started the "Wobbly movement". The big thing was that he wrote "Big Rock Candy Mountain," or the "Old Rock Candy Mountain," which I'd heard from childhood on. Lots of other songs, too, I guess, but that was his outstanding one. In all my song books I can't find that song. I've searched my California photos, but not a one of Sam!

The thing I remember most graphically about Sam was an event beside our swimming pool (in Bearsville). A group of us were sitting at the edge of the pool after swimming and Sam was telling us about his early life when he was a business man, a very successful one, and the subject got around to his physical strength somehow. Was he ever involved in something physical like wrestling or something? Anyway he said to me, "You don't believe I have terrific strength in my hands?" He then took my wrist in his big hand and squeezed it to the point where I realized that one more tiny degree would leave my wrist a shattered piece of bone and tendons. He knew exactly when to stop. It was somehow terrifying! I felt that he could crush a steel bar with no trouble at all.

At this point I can't think of a thing (more) that I could write about Sam...If something comes back to me I'll let you know.

C.G.: Later Fritzi found the picture that appears above, and some newspaper clippings about Sonia Malkine about which Fritzi wrote "so typical of Sam to help someone with a talent to get it out in the open." Sonia arrived in Woodstock in 1952 with her husband, George and the following year bought a place in nearby Shady, but earning a living in that area was (and still is) difficult. In the July 14, 1977 issue of (now extinct) Woodstock Times, in an article by Michael Walsh, she is quoted "...I started to work, but of course the only things I knew was what I had learned in the French Underground." She had been ..."a model, a waitress at the Espresso, I posed for colleges and the Art Students League, I worked at Big Scot, at Housts's. I did all kinds of things to keep my family together." And she began working at a Kingston radio station. "We had four children by then and a mortgage of $55 a month, but somehow we managed."

According to that newspaper article, Sonia's music career began in 1958 when she met Sam Eskin. "Mutzi Axel brought me to a party at Sam's and when Sam heard me sing during the evening, he was very interested. The next day Sam called me and I did a tape for him which he sent to Folkway Records. " He recognized her talent. He organized a concert and kept encouraging her. (The complete article may be found at this site at a later time.) Sonia's letter in 1994 from Shady, NY :

Sonia Malkine : ... I am glad you gave me another chance to talk about Sam. He was the very best friend I ever had and I loved him dearly. He opened doors and windows for me, first on myself then on the world of folk music and doing so, turned my life around. I will be eternally grateful to him for it all. I met him in the spring of 1958...I had a husband out of work, 2 jobs and four children. They were hard times... I... was fighting depression. ...Going to that party was the best thing that could have happened to me. Sam was very gregarious, and had many friends...I was sitting on the counter in the kitchen and a friend of mine asked me to sing something in French for him. So I sang a very quiet, pretty song from a 13th Century troubadour. By the time I had finished there was not a sound in the place. Sam had shut everybody up because he wanted to listen. When I turned around I was petrified to see everybody looking at me, and Sam, a big smile on his face, asked me: "Where do you sing?" "Well, in the shower, doing dishes, for my children..." "No, I mean professionally." "Sam, I am not a singer!" "But my dear woman, you ARE a singer, and I want everybody to hear you."

Still, I was surprised when he called me the next day. I recorded 17 French songs for him. Then he organized my first appearance on stage in Woodstock, coached me till I was in tears, introduced me to a lot of his folk musician friends, until I was able to keep going on my own. Up to that time, I had always been shy as a child, and a very private person, but getting on stage showed me that I could communicate with people, on and off stage. "Sing with your guts," Sam used to tell me. It was very difficult..and it took a long time to open up, but Sam was persistent and had a great deal of confidence in me. I am so glad he came into my life, he taught me so much, not only about folk music but about myself and what I could be or do. 

He sent the songs I recorded for him to Folkways and I made 2 records for them, then another privately, and lately a cassette with my son. In a nutshell Sam made me do what I had always dreamed of doing: to sing. Without his support and encouragement, I don't think I would have ever done it...

He would leave Woodstock at the first sign of frost (he hated cold and snow) and travelled to China, Spain or the Amazon, on mule back, on pirogue and come back home in the spring. He would work on his collections or on his house, an old barn full of llamas when he bought it in 1949, that he transformed into the warmest, friendliest place in town. He read a lot, a self-educated forever curious man. I remember some hot discussions between him and his sons. Stanley, English professor...(at that time)...and Otho a lawyer of international law, both brilliant minds. There were fascinating interchanges between these two highly educated young men and their father -- a fighter, (politically, socially and sometimes physically too!) self-made, intelligent, obstinate but perceptive man-of-the world. He had quite a diverse array of friends, not only musicians. He knew many and played poker with quite a few of the artists in Woodstock, and at the same dinner party (he loved to cook) you could find artists, writers, his plumber and -- Buckminster Fuller! I will always remember the night when Sam and his old friend B. Fuller danced (after a few drinks) on the big coffee table Sam had built with oak railroad ties!

He loved to work with his hands, he even build some bird feeders to watch birds with his binoculars. He was a stong man, physically and morally, and, although he could be tender, especially with children, he had no patience with weaklings of any age. He loved a good Bourbon, arts, sex, music, women (not necessarily in that order) but, most of all, he loved life. And he was a friend.

C.G.: This is a good place in which my daughter's recollections from her childhood and later (1948-1974) with Sam be added. I think Sam would be pleased to see the results of his encouraging her in music.

Crow Johnson: Sam arrived with a hearty laugh and a broad winning smile, great energy and a twinkling eye. As from a child's view he was wonderful and a little frightening, because he dared to roar if he felt like it, moved quickly or very slowly, be suddenly loud or dramatic with that knowing twinkle. Who was startled or offended mattered less than the ROAR. Child-like it seemed that the shock, the adrenaline was part of the reward. What made him not frightening was the great sense of love and care he showered from that smile. A room was a stage, long after I'd gone to bed I could hear his singing and joking.

C.G.: I have nearly every postcard, letter, picture, program, trinket that Sam ever sent me except for his first letter to me in Houston from The Dyer-Bennet Studio in Aspen, Colorado where he was teaching July 5-August 27, 1948 on "song collecting in the field". 

Postcards: to me in Yucaipa, CA.

1-23-63 Hi! Im ensconced here at a friends beach apartment working on a book of folk songs--Hope we can get together. Love, Sam

2-6-63 Dear Chia - Moving along without pushing too hard. El Paso tonite -- Austin Thursday nite or Friday morning. If there is any mail from send to me c/o General Dely., Miami, Florida.//Sam

I'd designed some stationary with Sam and one of my artist's and he wrote from Miami, FL:

2-19-63 If you have not already mailed the printing, forward same to Woodstock as I am leaving here in a few days on a collecting jaunt around the Ofikenokee (sic) Swamp area.//Temperatures here like Calif. but lots of rain. Still preferable to snow. Happy Geo.Washington's Birthday//Sam

The next postmark is unclear but looks like Port of France 18th 1-3 1963:

Martinique.//When I get thru in this jaunt I'll probably be heading north, collecting in Ga, No. & S. Carolina & Virginia -- then Woodstock.//Hello to all.//Sam

C.J. : He was always coming from somewhere interesting, and would have to leave soon to go somewhere else. On one visit I remember him showing me a collapsible guitar. The neck could be undone at the body of the guitar making it small enough to pack. He told me that he could go anywhere in the world and without knowing the language could find trust and friendship -- by taking out the guitar and singing a song. This was magic to me...

It was very exciting to have him record one of the first songs I had written, and explain to me that it would be part of the great American archives. My song in his eyes was as valid as any other -- this was amazing to me. I remember sitting in his home and looking at book cases full of reel-to-reel tape trying to imagine all the songs he must have recorded. Noticing my interest he suggested that I learn to transcribe by ear from tapes; that was a skill very much needed to document all the wonderful music in the world.

C.G.: Sam tried to encourage every musician to learn this. He'd enlisted my help on one of his projects when we were living on the Maverick Road in Woodstock in early 1946; I just never could learn it -- strange, too, because my earlier training as a flutist, a single-line instrument, should have made it easy for me. But, then, too, remember I wasn't that good a musician!

C.J.: My teenage years saw a different side of Sam. In the company of adults he was often lewd, raucous, wonderfully outrageous, but when one-to-one with Sam I experienced a more conservative paternal friend. His actions were almost cautious as I grew into young womanhood. At 18 a girlfriend and I were put on a bus from North Carolina when Mom's van broke down. She sent us to Kingston, then to Woodstock to stay with Sam for a few days until she and my cousin, Bob, had the car fixed and could meet up with us.

C.G.: I remember telephoning Sam from N.C. about the change in plans when the old VW Van Transporter broke down and told him that I'd be sending the girls ahead. He roared at that time, too, saying I'd ruin his reputation in Woodstock that people around there wouldn't believe he could chaperone two young girls. I laughed and said I had faith in him, not to worry.

C.J. : Sam cooked us food and carefully housed us in a trailer outside his place. It was the most awful mildew-infested spot, but we felt that he would not have it ever said we slept in the house with him there... In the summer of '62 I had gone to Gerties Folk City, USA, and heard Hedy West. The 5 string banjo became a glorious instrument capable of haunting and making beautifully delicate patterns. Within a year my mother had helped me get an old Gretch banjo with a short neck and solid wooden rim. I'd sit on the hilltop (far from the house) in Yucaipa, California, and work on "bum dit ee", thanks to Pete Seeger's book on banjo.

Sam came to Austin, TX where I was a college student at the University of Texas. Hedy West gave a wonderful solo performance sitting on a stool center stage -- pure voiced and magical. Later, it was such a treat to have dinner with Hedy and Sam at the home of Roger Abrams; how wide-eyed I was to hear fretless banjo and feel like a part of the circle.

C.G.: I have a US postcard dated Feb. 7, 1963 from Sam to me in Yucaipa, CA.

This to report a pleasant evening with Amy" (Crow was born Amy Goodenough) "supper at the home of Roger Abrams where Hedy West, who had given a concert the night before, was staying. Lots of folk songs, talk and a little singing interrupted by Amy's deadline at the dorm. ...Forward mail as per previous card c/o General Delivery, Miami, Florida, where I go after Tallahassee. Sam

It's fun to think about Sam. I've spent nearly 30 years now writing songs, and playing them for people. Sam is surely one of the wonderful characters, who has decorated and influenced my musical meanderings. I miss his coming around. Crow Johnson's web page

C.G.: I have a letter from Sam typewritten on m/s FRANCA C. onionskin letterhead:

Woodstock, March 22, 1963. Dear Chia: Enclosed publicity releases in two forms, a short and a long. Do look them over and tell me what is to be done about running off a batch of both for future use. I could use a couple right now. // Hope you received the bow and arrows and that they are happy in their new home. there was one loose arrowhead, which I hope you found and restored to its shaft. // My program takes me to the Indian Neck Folk Festival May 3 to 5th; then to the National Folk Festival at Covington, KY. May 16-18th, where I sing. Then leizurely cross country stopping at the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder, and, if possible, I might be seeing Parker in Montana. I am writing him today. // Have fun and let me know about the "releases" as soon as you can, if not otherwise.// Sam