I think the group doing the interview was a quintet of young college types - The Blackwood Singers. We were on a local radio program on WCBM in Baltimore and we were pickin’ a few and singin’ a few and in between the pickin’ and the grinnin’ the host talked with us. During a commercial break, the door opened and a young guy walked in, introduced himself – Hey. I’m George Stevens. I’ve got a little coffee house downtown…why don’t you drop by this weekend and do a ‘Guest Set’. Then another door opened. And I walked through…

            George was in his mid-twenties, had sort of-a-flat-top and was the owner of a coffee house at 103-1/2 22nd St. in downtown Baltimore called The Blue Dog Cellar. Long narrow stairway down to a small, carpeted room with a step-up stage, a brick wall behind, great lighting, great sound. Coffees, Teas. Exotic Soft Drinks, sandwiches. A very cool room.

            When I began my professional musical life at The Blue Dog Cellar there were four performers who played regular weekend gigs and it was that group I worked to get into. Bob Sessions was a student at Johns Hopkins and he always appeared in a tweed sport jacket, tweed vest, and a shirt and tie. The ladies drooled over Bob as he sang the Olde English Ballads and ‘Cotten-Picked’ his Martin D35.

            Biff Rose was a N’Awlins native and at the time a musician in the US Army Show  Band. Biff’s repertoire was ‘eclectic’ to say the least. He played the 5-String Banjo, recited long obscure comedy works by obscure writers like Lord Buckley, and was generally off the rails most of the time. Biff was one of the finest performers I've ever known.

​

            Jim Hoswell – ‘Hos’ – was a local dude who had a day job in a steel mill and sang the blues. ‘Hos’ was old school, a lovely fellow, and a great singer.
           

            And George Stevens himself would perform his act of old folk songs, loose comedy bits, and if you begged real hard he’d do his signature tune – Abiyoyo – which always seemed to change a bit every time George did it.

            Soon I was hosting ‘Sunday Hootenanny Nights’, introducing any local act with three chords and a reasonable facsimile of a singing voice. George loved ‘Sunday Hoot Nite’ because the amateur acts would bring family and friends to watch them onstage and so ‘Sunday Hoot Nites’ were always lucrative.

            By the end of 1962 I was singing with Maureen Kelly, a young woman who had the voice of an angel. Pure, always in tune, Kelly’s voice would make you weep when she sang ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ and laugh when we sang a comedy song about Ocean City…in Baltimore accents. ‘Skip & Kelly’ played not only at The Blue Dog Cellar but everything from high school hootenannies to The World Championship Muskrat Skinning Contest in Cambridge, Maryland…the stage was a mess but the money was good.

            I’d become a local Star!

            In the Summer of 1963 George opened a Summer ‘Blue Dog’ in Ocean City and made me a Co-Manager of The Blue Dog Cellar in Baltimore. I was busy, working all the time, and making money. In early 1964, George, Kelly & I took off on our first road trip to do some concerts in Western Michigan and a planned drive to Chicago to do some guest sets at some of the folk clubs. We played ‘It’s Here’ in Chicago, a club that had pillows all around instead of tables and chairs. George said it was the first time he’d played to a horizontal audience.

            In the summer of 1964 George moved the Blue Dog Cellar to a new, luxuriously appointed location, served drinks, booked top talent and was finally running a prosperous club. He sold the old Blue Dog Cellar to my friend Michael O’Hara and Michael carried on with the good vibes after re-naming the place 'The Foghorn'. I had gone out with a group working out of New York City – The Just IV – and when that group broke up in the summer of ’64, one of the guys came back to Baltimore with me and we built a trio that would leave Baltimore in 1965 for New York City!

            The new Blue Dog burned, rebuilt, and then finally closed in late 1965. George moved to New York City where he began to chase his dream of doing stand-up. He played the Playboy circuit to hone the act and it was in one of those clubs that I last saw him.

            Every musician / performer has a story like this. Someone who gave him a chance to follow that dream. Nobody does anything alone. I was lucky to have two people who believed in and took an interest in my creativity. But George Stevens was the first and I will never forget him for that. George was a great guy….

           

            In the Fall of 1973 I was living in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I worked days in the family Leather Shop on The Parkway and worked nights doing a single act at ‘The Shed’, a local bar in town. Gatlinburg was kind of ‘off the beaten track’ and between workin’ the tourists and playin’ the gig, I didn’t pay much attention to news from the outside world. So it was that sometime around Christmas I found out that George had finally gotten his big break and gone out on a National Tour, opening for Jim Croce and had gone down in the plane with Croce one night in September after a concert in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

            It’s forty-six years later and I still miss him…