A Conversation With Troubadour Ramblin’ Jack Elliott About His Life, Dreams, Music and Friends Along The Way

By: Rick Landers

Images: Courtesy of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott

True grit, in the name of Jack Elliott (born Elliott Charles Adnopoz; August 1, 1931, Brooklyn, New York) was on the road when he was fifteen years old to become…a cowboy. The son of a surgeon, Abraham Adnopoz, and school teacher, Florence “Flossie” (Rieger) Adnopoz, his Wild West dream was inspired by “The Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry and his remarkable horse, (Touring) Champion, when Gene’s rodeo showed up at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

Many moons later, Jack would take on the moniker, “Ramblin'” when the legendary folk singer, Odetta, introduced him to her mother, Flora Sanders, who noted how he could carry on with his stories – (“Oh, Jack Elliott, yeah, he can sure ramble on!”) The young Jack, inspired by the Gene Autry rodeo set off for North Carolina hitching rides where he connected with Jim Eskew’s Rodeo, a traveling show that made its way along the East Coast of the United States.

“When he’s learning a song he kind of tries it on like a pair of gloves…He’s got a way of doing things that’s uniquely his own. He makes a song his own. That’s the beauty of it.” – Tom Waits

It didn’t take long – three months – when his father, Abraham, and mother, Florence, tracked him down and brought him back home to finish school. But, during his time with the rodeo he befriended a true cowboy and rodeo clown, poet, Brahmer Rogers, who played guitar, banjo and sang.

Inspired, Jack taught himself how to play guitar and five-string banjo and while back in New York he met the legendary folk musician, Woody Guthrie. Jack and Woody struck up a kinship, with Jack living with the Guthrie’s for a couple of years. Woody was diagnosed in 1952 with Huntington chorea hereditary disease, institutionalized in 1956 and passed away in 1967.  Jack had embraced Woody’s music and the man, and continues to honor him carrying the lyrical extent of Guthrie’s portrayal of America’s fault lines, promise and vision.

“His tone of voice is sharp, focused and piercing. All that and he plays the guitar effortlessly in a fluid flat-picking perfected style. He was a brilliant entertainer…. Most folk musicians waited for you to come to them. Jack went out and grabbed you….. Jack was King of the Folksingers.” – Bob Dylan 

Jack toured the U.K. and Europe with banjoist, Derroll Adams,  and he was signed to Topic Records where he recorded three albums and he landed a gig on U.K.’s television series, Hullabaloo, presented by  folksinger, Rory McEwen. And while in England, Jack became a staple of the English folk and skiffle scene with his interpretive music and ability to captivate audiences with his style and yarn spinnng tales. Tenacious and driven, his musical education included teaching himself various guitar fingerpicking styles, as well as harmonica to better portray songs of  folk, country, blues and bluegrass tunes, and what may today be referred to as traditional Americana.

“I’d recognize Jack’s right-hand rhythm across a fairground. They reset atomic clocks to it.”  – Tom Paxton

Back in the States, “The Rambler” was known for his down-to-earth style and his performances of Woody’s songs with Guthrie once saying, “Sounds more like me than I do.”

“Nobody I know—and I mean nobody—has covered more ground and made more friends and sung more songs than the fellow you’re about to meet right now. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him. Say hello to my good buddy, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.”  – Johnny Cash

Later, Jack took on the role of mentor with a young Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) and would introduce him as his “son”. And Jack would become a sought after entertainer, working with many who are now fellow folk and country music icons: Phil Ochs, Odetta, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, and more during an era of what some called, “The Folk Scare”.

Jack’s recording history is extensive with his first album, Woody Guthrie’s Blues (1956 – Topic), recorded by music historian, Alan Lomax, in England. The album featured six songs by Guthrie, including such riveting tunes as, “1913 Massacre,” and “Talking Columbia Blues,” a home grown solo project with Jack on vocals, guitar and harmonica.

The next year, a second album, Jack Elliot Sings (1957 – 77 Label), another home recording with music critic, Richie Unterberger, noting “it’s a good no-frills set…” Liner notes were written by Alex Korner, a musician considered, “a founder father of British blues”.

More across the pond albums would follow: Jack Takes then Floor (1958) and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in London (1959), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers (1960) and “Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie (1960). Then back in the States in 1962 he released what many consider one of his finest recordings, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (1962).

“Colorado had a reputation. Smoke a lot of dope, lot of pretty girls. It was a fun place to play, me and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot covered 12 cities in a broken-down RV full of strange characters. It was like Ken Kesey’s bus.” – John Prine

Many more albums would follow and in 1996 he would be the recipient of a Grammy Award for South Coast (South Coast label) – Best Traditional Folk Album, then again in 2010 – Best Traditional Blues Album in 2010 for “A Stranger Here”.

Holstering two Grammy awards and four Grammy nominations, Elliott is respected as a genuine American treasure. And in 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Jack with the National Medal of the Arts. More recently, Jack’s daughter, Aiyana (Elliott) Partland, filmed, directed and produced, The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack, that presented perspectives on Elliott’s life and their relationship, attaining an impressive Special Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival.  In 2016, he became a recipient of a Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award.

“In giving new life to our most valuable musical traditions, Ramblin’ Jack has himself become an American treasure.” – President Bill Clinton

Jack’s life experience is deep and straddles a panoramic view of American life, and with his drive and artistic curiosity he’s sought and grasped its traditions and its raw and spirited tangled roots. From the mountains of Appalachia and the Rockies, the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has lived the hardscrabble life of a road dawg musician, starting from a New York island…

Guitar International is honored to offer its readers our conversation with The Rambler, who was astute, congenial and an engaging conversationalist, as we talked about his guitars, music, musicians, long haul truckers, logging, seafaring, old friends and his next gig: May 22, 2026, at The Freight in Berkeley, California, with his band and friends: Sean Allen, Paul Knight & Kendrick Freemen and Friends: Jason Crosby, Maria Muldaur, Eric & Suzy Thompson, Mike Beck, Lowell ‘Banana’ Levinger, Jessie DeNatale & Kathy Kallick.

TICKETS TO JACK’S MAY 22 FREIGHT SHOW AVAILABLE HERE!

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Rick: Let’s start with the projects that you’re working on now. I know that you’ve got a band, and I think you’re going to be playing in California in May.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yes, it’s May twenty-second in Berkeley at the Freight and Salvage, about a hundred miles away, it’s about a three and a half hour drive.

Rick: Are you going to be playing solo or are you going to be with a band?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I’m gonna be with a band.

Rick: Who’s in your band?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: (Lowell) “Banana” Levinger, who used to play with Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods, “Come on, everybody, let’s get together and love one another right now.” First time I met him was in Cambridge. 1965 or so. Made a trip to Woodstock, New York, on two motorcycles. And we had very bad weather, big, heavy, heavy rain and wind.

Rick: Oh, wow.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And he had to leave his wife in a driveway. Take the rear wheel off. I took Jesse and his rear wheel on the back of my motorcycle. Drove up ahead, found the garage, got the tire fixed, went back, found this wet wife. It was a wet day, everything was wet.

Rick: Yeah, kind of dangerous.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And we got to Woodstock and then I didn’t see him for about a year. And then we happened to be neighbors, he was playing at a nearby gig on the same street in Oklahoma City with me, and I went down, we had a beer together.

Rick: Ridgetop, right?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, it was not far from him. His house on Ridgetop was about 10 miles away from where we found a place to live and rented a nice little house on the bay there. Tomales Bay. Where are you located?

Rick: I’m in Northern Virginia, Reston, Virginia.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I was there once. Just to visit a friend or his parents. (Performed – Herndon-Reston Folk Club – The Tortilla Factory)

Rick: Yeah, we’ve got some pretty good clubs here. Do you know The Birchmere?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I played there one time, with Guy Clark.

Rick: Oh, did you really? Oh, very cool.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, it was a wonderful time. And we were put up by a veterinarian who takes care of lions in the zoo. And he had a biplane, a Stearman. And we were gonna go for a ride with him, but the guy had to be somewhere else.

Rick: So, who else is in your band?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: My bass player is Paul Knight, who’s an excellent bass player, he plays on a guitar sized bass. It’s electrified, but not a solid body, it’s a hollow body, like an acoustic. Bananas’ guitar is a five-string guitar. Never seen one before.

Rick: I once interviewed Roger McGuinn and he had just gotten his 7-string signature model from Martin.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I think that’s a Russian guitar. They play 7-string guitars in Russia. I think that’s the only place they do. There’s gonna be another guitar player who’s a very, very good electric guitar player. And I played with him several times, and a drummer who’s an excellent drummer.

I’ve got several other famous musicians who are playing with me there, too. Maria Mauldar. and Jason Crosby. No relation to David. I didn’t get along with David. He had a lovely boat. A schooner. And I love sailing. I used to visit the schooner and its captain when David was not around.

Rick: That’s funny. Do you know Gordon Bok?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yes, but I haven’t seen Gordon in a long time. Sailed with him in the sloop, Clearwater. He was the mate on the Clearwater. He sings a lot of sea shanties.

Rick: Yeah, I wrote a song about a white whale off the coast of Chile. It’s called “Leviathan”.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: When I was a kid, my next door neighbor, Captain Bob Hinckley was the first mate on the largest ocean liner on the Atlantic between World War I and World War II. The SS Leviathan, which is a fancy word for whale.

And when he was a kid. Oh, like, about 14 years old, he sailed in a whale ship out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was one of the largest whaling ports. It was 1912, the last year they ever had a whale ship come out of New Bedford. Charles W. Morgan. It’s the name of the ship.

Rick: It’s an interesting history. This morning I watched The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and I thought your daughter, Aiyana, did a nice job.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I think so too, I enjoyed the movie a lot.

Rick: Yeah, how’d you find the experience of actually doing the filming and being part of that?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Well, it wasn’t too hard playing Ramblin’ Jack. Because, I got to do it for another movie once before. I’ve starred as Ramblin’ Jack on three different documentaries, one was in Texas. One was in Sausalito, California, mostly about boats and people who love boats. And the other one was the one that Aiyana did, which was very good, and won a prize.

Rick: Oh, cool. Let’s go back several years, and we’re going to cover a little bit of ground that I know you’ve covered several times before. But, I think it was 1951 when you went to Madison Square Garden and you saw Gene Autry.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: No, that was in 1940. I was nine years old.

Rick: Well, there’s a lot of bad information out there, so…

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: There is, there certainly is.

Rick: So, what was your impression of seeing him? I mean, he was a huge.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: As a child, I thought it was wonderful. I had never seen a cowboy. I loved everything about the rodeo. Up to and including Gene and his horse, but…the following year, Roy Rogers was the star. And I liked Roy pretty much too, and his horse, Trigger. But I was beginning to get a lot more fascinated about real cowboys and there’s quite a lot of difference between Gene Autry and the real work of cowboys.

Rick: So, did you ever meet Gene?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I did meet him later, when he was in his 90s, and I was in my 60s. And I shook his hand at a big dinner down in Palm Springs. I was hanging out with an Indian actor friend of mine, American Indian (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) who acted in movies, and sang and had a voice like Johnny Cash. He was in a movie called, Dances With Wolves.

With Gene, I said, “Hello, I saw you when I was nine, and I play a Martin. And he said, “Good!”. And that was it and I realized that I was a little too perspicacious about his old age. And now I’m 94, probably older than he was then. This is thirty years later and Gene’s in heaven, or somewhere nearby.

Rick: That’s sweet to say that. I interviewed Les Paul when he was 94. And he was quite astute and he kept at it until he was 101 years old. He played that week up in New York City at the Iridium, the same week he passed away. But, he had a long, good life. And he was quite astute when he passed away at 101.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The day after Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday I went to see Les Paul in the Iridium. I went with my manager who was married to a guitar player, Roy Rogers.

Rick: The slide player?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yes. And they’re also acquainted with the movie actor, Roy Rogers, and they visited Roy at his home ranch, when Roy was living. And they have a lot of Roy Rogers type paraphernalia around their house decorations.

Rick: And Gene has a museum, right?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, as a matter of fact, last night I couldn’t think of this trick rider’s name, but when I was 15 I ran away from home and got a job on a traveling rodeo outfit, the J.E. Ranch Rodeo. They hired me as a groom and gave me a string of six horses to take care of in a big tent. We went from Washington, D.C., where I was hired to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And we sucked up approximately 30 tons of coal dust into the train. And when we unloaded the horses and bulls and cattle from the train in Pittsburgh I had to wash my hands and face, and every half hour on the trip, so I didn’t come out totally blackface. My first job was helping to unload bucking horses out of a box car.

Rick: Wow.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: It wasn’t a box car, it was what they call a baggage car that had been converted into a cattle car. We were unloading them out of that into a truck and taking them over to the indoor rodeo in Pittsburgh. We were there ten days; it rained a lot. We had a clown on that show called Brahma Rogers. He played a five-string banjo and guitar and sang cowboy and hillbilly songs. They didn’t have Country Western at that time. That was a new name for the music. I was gone for three months. I got a guitar and started to learn how to play.

Rick: Is that the Gretsch you had in the early days?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: No, the first was a cheap guitar made out of cigar boxwood. It was called a Collegiate. It was about 12 dollars. After three months of trying to play on that miserable guitar my fingers were getting like elephant’s feet, because it had very bad action with the strings about half an inch off the fingerboard.

Then I took some lessons from a Cuban gentleman, and he was very nice. And he told me that he knew of a Gretsch guitar that was for sale in the window of a music store down on Third Avenue under the Third Avenue L. That’s an elevated train. And I went there, slightly shopworn from sunburn. And they sold me that Gretsch 75 for $75, and I thought it was worth a lot more. And that I had when I met Woody and was hanging out with Woody Guthrie for three years. And then I met my wife in 1954. We got married, went to Europe in ’55.

We toured around Europe for three years with the Gretsch on a motor scooter, over the Alps in a blizzard. Never hurt that guitar, had a really firm case for it, a hard wooden case. I brought it back and went to the same store where I bought it, the Gretsch and bought a D-28 Martin dreadnaught which was a really nice guitar.

Rick: Yeah, that would have been Brazilian rosewood.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yes. So, I retired the Gretsch temporarily and left it for safekeeping in a closet in the House of Usher where I met June, my first wife. Usher; his mother was a painter and taught painting. And my bride was an art model who modeled for painters. And she modeled for art schools. She was also an actress.

Rick: I noticed on that D-28 that you were playing, it looked like you or somebody had changed the fretboard because of the inlays I saw on it. I’d never seen inlays like that on that D-28.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: That’s right, that was done by a friend I’d met who went by the name Guthrie Thomas, like Dylan Thomas. That wasn’t his real name, of course. He was a cute kid and was really good with Mother of Toilet Seat.

And he said he worked for Martin Guitars, which may have been true, it may not have been true. He was good with Mother of Pearl and he produced a series of little images up and down the neck of things he was fond of. I didn’t give him a list of what things I would like on the guitar. I just left it totally up to him, I think. Maybe I did give him some suggestions, like one was a Kenworth truck with smoke coming out of the smokestack.

Another was a horse. I later got a painter friend of mine in Colorado to paint. She had painted a lot of horses. She’s a horse painter. She’s still alive. I gave her a photograph of a bull rider making a very good ride. She copied it in pencil because the pick guard had come unglued from the guitar and there was a rough, bare wood section with no protection. So, she sanded it smooth and drew a pencil drawing copied from the photograph and filled it in with paint, oil paint. And covered it over with a piece of transparent plastic to it…wouldn’t be injured by the guitar pick and the pick guard is still on the guitar. I still play on that Martin.

Rick: Doesn’t it have a dolphin or fish on the fretboard as well?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I believe there was. I don’t have it here in the house. My bass player, Paul, who is an excellent sound man and knows how to speak to sound.

Rick: So, you’re going to be playing in May.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, May twenty-second. And it’s one day before my grandsons’ birthday. They’re gonna be 17. They’re catching up with me and they’re about one foot taller than me.

And they’re just babies, but they’re champion volleyball players. They love sports and they’re very good students in high school. They’re graduating this summer.

Rick: That’s a milestone. It’s nice to have grandbabies.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: It certainly is. It’s very nice, very nice! I never went to grandpa, grand parenting school. I don’t know what to do. But, every day I’m learning new tricks.

Rick: Well, that’s part of life, right? You know, things…you keep learning as long as you can and experiencing things. Maybe that’s the purpose of life, you know, to explore and discover new things.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Keep her full, as the sailors say, the square rigger sailors from olden times, you know, clipper ships. “Keep her full and by,” steer small.

Rick: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: “Keep her full and by,” steer small.

Rick: That’s clever and that’s probably true, right?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, not the stuff you see in movies. Because when you do this, you end up having to do this! That’s called steering all over the map.

Rick: Let’s talk, a little bit about songwriting. When you’re writing a song, do you have an idea of what you’re gonna play, or do you noodle around?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I’ve only written three songs and I don’t know how to write a song and I have no idea when or if I can write another one, but I hope I can, and I would love to. I wrote one song that was about a trip to New Orleans where I met a banjo player named Billy Farrer.

Rick: Hmm.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And he’s like the star of the song. And in fact, he was a very great banjo player. I think my song helped to make him a lot more famous than he would have been. And he appreciated that, and we became good friends.

Rick: So, what was it like living with the Guthrie family?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, well, Arlo was three years old when I moved in with them in 1951, and I was nineteen. I’m 16 years older and I was 19 and Woody was 39 or 40, about 20 years older than me. Yeah, when I was 20, Woody was 40. They lived in a small apartment. The apartment building was owned by the Trump family [smiles], you may have heard of them.

Rick: I have.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: A little-known family in Queens.

Rick: Uh-huh, yep.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: As a cowboy, I never appreciated Queens or Brooklyn. I like some things about New York City though, I like the Empire State Building, I like the Brooklyn Bridge. I love the West Side Highway with all the transatlantic liners that used to come in there and blow their foghorns.  I’ve always been romantically attracted to ships.

Rick: Well, I was thinking about this, this morning, that you’re a romantic. Even as a little boy you left home to become a cowboy; that’s a true romance.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, I was reading books by Will James.

Rick: Uh-huh, yeah.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Somebody turned me on to a book called, Lone Cowboy: My Life Story, by Will James. That was his autobiography. It wasn’t entirely true. Of course, as a naive young kid, I believed everything I read. Later, I found out that Will James was not born in Montana, by the side of the trail. He was born in Montreal.

Rick: Oh, he’s a Canadian.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And he spoke with a French-Canadian accent. And couldn’t get a job working in Hollywood as a cowboy. Because they thought he didn’t speak like a cowboy with that French accent.

Rick: That’s funny you should mention that. When I was doing some research on you, I  started doing a deep dive on Gene Autry and his best friend ended up being Mr. Haney on the tv series, Green Acres.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I never was much of a film theater goer, film watcher. I met Jack Nicholson one time. And I saw a movie that he made. I had actually gone to see this movie called Five Easy Pieces. And in the end of the movie, he’s hitchhiking up to Canada, and he gets a ride in a very cool red Kenworth log truck. A big one, and I said, “Jack, that was a beautiful log truck!” and he says, “Why, Jack, I didn’t know you were a movie goer.”

Rick: So, did you do a lot of hitchhiking when you were young?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: From the time I was about 17 or 18 until I was about 22 or so, I did a lot. In fact, that’s how I learned how to drive a semi, driven about 30 semis as a hitchhiker.

Rick: Really?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The driver gets tired, he says, “Can you drive?” And I said, “Yeah, a little.”

Rick: He wants to sleep!

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: You drive for a couple hours, I need to get some sleep, I’m falling asleep, okay; change drivers. And I started liking it. I’ve never turned one over.

Rick: Well, that’s good.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I’ve never had a wreck of any kind with a semi.

Rick: Yeah, my father used to drive a truck pulling trailers.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Oh, boy.

Rick: Back in the ‘60s…

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah. And I’ve driven log trucks, too.The first time I drove a log truck, it was a fully loaded log truck. It wasn’t empty, it was loaded. But it was on a paved road. And I was going slightly downhill along the Skagit River Valley in Oregon, coming off of Mount Baker.

It was just me and my dog and the truck driver. My dog was a good driver. He’s a Husky. Huskies are born drivers, they love to drive, but you shouldn’t teach your dog to drive. You can get in a lot of trouble.

And I think from that first time, you know, like, he was memorizing everything I did. And so, I didn’t teach him, but he learned by watching me.

Rick: That’s funny. That’s a good story.

During the early mid-Sixties, when the Beatles came out and all those British Invasion folks came out. Then they kind of took over the airwaves. Did you have to reinvent what you were doing or did you just keep plugging on, you know, being Ramblin’ Jack Elliott?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: No, I didn’t do anything to change what I was doing. I thought what I was doing was perfect the way it was. And I didn’t need to be influenced in any way by the Beatles. In fact, in the beginning I didn’t realize what an old crotch I am, see, but that was in 1965.

Rick: That’s right, yeah, ’64, ’65, great, right.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And I had to go to Newport Folk Festival, and I had just recently made friends with a very scary man that I used to always walk on the other side of the street.

Rick: Hmm, okay.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Great songwriter, Tim Hardin.

Rick: Oh yeah, “If I Were A Carpenter”.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And that became one of my favorite songs. And then I met Tim one day and he had a motorcycle, we’re talking about motorcycles. I found out he’s really a cool guy then.

There was the Newport Folk Festival. It was having difficulty getting tickets. People had to fly in from the West Coast. But, they sent Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary. A special detail to get us tickets and make sure to get Tim and me on a plane to fly to Newport, Rhode Island, for the Folk Festival.

Rick: Yeah, ’65, wasn’t that when Dylan came out electric?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Uh, no this was ’64, And it was ’65 when he went electric, and I wasn’t in Newport at ’65. I was in England. And the Beatles were getting popular in ’65, and I didn’t know who they were; didn’t know nothing about them. And I was visiting an English friend of mine who was at Newport. Bob Davenport and his wife Tarbi.

Rick: Really? That’s wild.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: They were watching the Beatles on TV. We stayed overnight at their house. He and I saw the Beatles, and he loved them. And I wasn’t too sure about it. I was more in love with just plain old cowboy music and the Carter family. And Mississippi John Hurt and Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly. And anything else was not, not music.

Rick: You had your fix on the style and the genre, as they say.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, I was locked into that. I didn’t even care for Gene Autry at all anymore by that time. I’d outlived him.

Rick: Okay, so when you were in England, who were you listening to in the English scene? I lived in England for a couple years. And then I hitchhiked through Europe and, you know, to Greece. And then I was going to go to Turkey and India, but there were issues between Turkey.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Absolutely. EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) was the name of some political group.

Rick: They were fighting or something, I couldn’t even see the Parthenon, because they cordoned it off. And guys are walking around with rifles.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Wow, I was in Greece three times. I love it and I liked the food.

Rick: So, when you were in England, who were people listening to? I know there were Pentangle and Davy Graham, John Martyn.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I knew Davy Graham.

Rick: Did you really? Oh, cool.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, he was a good friend. And I knew his mother. I was like a friend of the family. I’d known him when he was a kid. He wore some kind of a homemade fur suit. Looked like a bear getting out of a subway train.

Rick: I think one of his claims to fame is the instrumental, “Angie”.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I may have heard it, but I’m not familiar.

Rick: Yeah. Yeah, I’d expect if you heard it you’d recognize it.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I knew Rory McEwen and his brother Alex. I knew the guys who started the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club (1957-1961), at Wardour  Street in the Charrington’s Roundhouse Pub in Wardour Street directly across the street from the Windmill theater that had the only naked lady in England.

Rick: I lived in Coventry when I was there and I worked for Virgin Records for a short period and ended up going down to Abbey Road.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I only met one… some of the Beatles one time.

Rick: Yeah?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I had just been to a wedding, Kris and Rita Kristofferson.

Rick: Yeah. Rita Coolidge.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And the next day they were recording in Hollywood at Sunset Studios and I went to visit them. And, uh, when I got there I walked in from the back parking lot and bumped into Kris and Rita in the hallway. They were having a cigarette, taking a break. And so, they needed to relax for a while, Kris says. “Hey Jack.” I go into Studio A, there’s some people that love you down there. Studio A, okay. I walk down the hall, I open the door and walk in. There’s a room with about 20 people.

And they’re all looking through the window, two people are playing guitars and recording and I don’t recognize anybody, I look into the window and I do recognize one guitar player, David Bromberg. And the other guy is a guitar player from the Beatles, but I didn’t recognize him.

Rick: Was that George Harrison or John Lennon?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: George Harrison. And I didn’t know what he looked like. I didn’t know who he was. But, I did recognize this beautiful Swedish film star. I can’t remember her name now, but she was a very famous movie star and there were no seats available. So, she got up and sat down on her boyfriend’s lap next to her and gave me her seat.

Rick: Oh, how sweet!

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I just said, “Thank you, ma’am”… Sat down, because I’m…Don’t know who’s who at all, except Peter Sellers.

Rick: Oh, that was Britt Eklund.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: That’s right, Britt Eklund. Lovely. I’m sitting right next to her, elbow to elbow. I turned around, to see if I can recognize anybody back there, because there’s three or four rows of people back there. And I recognize one person, and he’s winking at me. He’s the drummer from the Beatles.

Rick: Ringo, yeah.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Ringo is winking at me. And then I just turned around and watched the show, and a few seconds later, a New York guy on the inner sanctum opens the door that’s to the engineering room booth. And he says, “There’s too many people in this room!”

That’s a real New York invitation. So I left. Feeling rather rotten about it. But, I bumped into Ringo a few days later at a Willie Nelson concert. I went back to say, “Hi!” to Willie, and I end up with Ringo, with our arms around each other, like we’re old friends taking a photograph. And I was so stunned, I never even thought to ask the photographer if I could have a copy of that photograph…I have never seen it. But, I did meet Ringo again, one time when Phil Ochs died. I was playing in a tribute concert in Madison Square Garden.

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: And, Ringo’s coming down the hallway, and we met head on and he picks me up. He’s very strong, being a drummer. Flips me over his shoulder.

Rick: That’s hilarious.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Now I’m kicking and I’m swatting Ringo on the butt. “Put me down! Put me down! For about 100 feet, and he finally did put me down, but he walked a long ways through the hallway, crowded. All the way backstage at Madison Square Garden.That’s the last time I ever saw Ringo. We were good friends for about 12 minutes.

Rick: Well, that’s still pretty special and probably special for him because I remember seeing the photos of the Beatles early when they were probably the Silver Beatles.They’re all wearing cowboy boots.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Really?

Rick: So, they liked cowboys. If I run through…I did this with Les Paul. I started mentioning names, and he would give me quick one-liners of his experiences with them, or what he thought of them. Can I do that with you?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yes.

Rick: Let’s start with John Prine.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I toured with John on three or four occasions. Loved him a lot. We had a lot of laughs. It was always fun. The first time, I was coming from California, I was gonna fly to meet John in Colorado and tour. These ski towns in the summertime, in the Rockies.

And I went to visit a neighbor friend here in Santa Cruz. I was living in Santa Cruz at the time and this woman had what they call the Santa Cruz Costume Bank. If you were gonna have a party and wanted people to dress up like Halloween she would supply you with whatever you wanted to dress up in. And I was visiting her one day, and I was due to go to Colorado the next day.  And she had a friend who I didn’t know. He was a black comedian, a very likable guy and funny. He had just rented a motorhome and he came by and he said, “I just rented a motorhome and I don’t know where to go. I want to go to someplace nice.”

She said, “Jack here is going to Colorado to tour with John Prine, let’s take him there.”

Zoom.

An hour later, we’re going Highway 17. She’s in the kitchen making some snacks for us, standing up on Highway 17. You can’t stand up on Highway 17. Bad curves, bad… They have dangerous wrecks there every week. We ended up in Colorado. And, our first gig was somewhere towards Denver, but it was in the mountains, west of Denver. Our comedian friend ended up performing on stage. Just for the fun of it.

I can’t remember his name, I’ve never seen him again. But, he was funny enough, we loved him. And the audience all found him very funny and it was unexpected, of course, because it wasn’t announced. John was traveling with his manager and a couple of other friends in a van. I had this motorhome. So, we’d take turns swapping over and riding in with each other in different vehicles. And, lots of love and lots of fun.

Another time I opened for John in an old theater in Monterey, California. I just went there to see a new friend of mine who’s really a great singer-songwriter from Houston. Used to be married to Johnny Cash’s daughter, Roseanne Cash. (Rodney Crowell)

Rick: Did you ever meet Townes Van Zandt?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah, I toured with Townes on one occasion. And he was traveling in a van with his bass player, and I think I was in my truck. I don’t think I was riding in the same vehicle with Townes. And I liked him a lot.

Rick: He was supposed to be a pretty smart fella.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Awful smart, very, very smart guy and I love that song he did about, “All the Federales say they could have had him any day.”

Rick: Oh, ”Pancho and Lefty!”

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Yeah.

Rick: I had an opportunity to play in Raton, New Mexico. He has a song about the snows of Raton.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Raton. Yeah, it’s right on the border of Colorado.

Rick: That’s right, and so what I really liked about being there and performing there, I actually performed at a cemetery, performed a song about some miners who passed away in 1913 and 1923. Anyway, I was pleased to be able to play.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Wonderful. I can have a visual image of what that looked like going over Raton Pass on I-25. And the first town you get to is, uh, is near Trinidad, and it’s called Lulu. And there was a song Woody Guthrie wrote, a song about some coal miners who were on strike and the company didn’t like that. The miners went into a little cave they dug, about 11 feet deep. And they had their pregnant wives down in there. And the company, all thugs came with guns.

There was some fire. They set fire to all their tents, so they moved down into a cave in the ground. And then some women from Trinidad hauled some potatoes up Wallenberg in a little cart. Sold some potatoes and brought some guns back. And he put a gun in every hand. And the redneck miners, they mowed down them troopers. They did not know that we had these guns. You should have seen them boys, them bull boys run. And that was the end of that, and there was like 31 kids got killed. And there was another song like that, that Woody wrote that was equally sad and bloody, and hard to take, called “The 1913 Massacre”.

Rick: Didn’t he call it the 1913 massacree?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I don’t know. I call it massacre, but he might have called it massacree. Might have called it that. I sang it in a tribute to Woody in Washington, D.C. And they televised it, but they didn’t play that song, they said it was too long. I think it was too sad. They don’t want the audience to suffer too many sad stories, especially about coal miners.

Rick: It’s  a coincidence that I wrote a song called “1913 Stag Canyon Number 2, which is about miners who passed away in 1913 and their sons who passed away in 1923. That’s why I was invited to Raton and the Dawson cemetery to perform for about 500 descendants.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Oh, well, bless you! Great. I have a friend who plays guitar, and he lives in a little town, south of L.A., on the beach. He had a little recording studio in the garage and he was working as a television truck coordinator. I could call up a driver and say, “Meet me at Hollywood and Vine with truck T25 at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow.”

And we’re gonna do a shoot, blah, blah, blah. He had a four-wheel drive and he drove me to a poetry gathering in Alpine, Texas. And we stayed with one of my favorites, Cowboy Joel (Joel Nelson), the guy that ran the Alpine gathering and that guy didn’t drink whiskey, but one of my friends taught me earlier, if you’re in Texas and you go visit, you should bring a bottle of whiskey.

So, I brought him a bottle of whiskey. He never opened it, but we had oatmeal breakfast every morning, and he would read us some poetry. And one of his favorite poets was one of my father’s school chumps; gave me a copy of this book of poetry by a guy who lived in Hawaii in a little cabin. He was a retired Merchant Marine sailor. And it was poetry, romantic poetry about having a cabin full of all kinds of trinkets that he gathered around the world when he was a sailor. And he would read us poetry.

Rick: Thank you. So, what about Steve Earle?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: I like Steve Earle, a great guy. We’ve always liked each other. He sang with me at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

Rick: Nice guy, I interviewed him a couple of years ago. What about Odetta?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Odetta was the one who gave me the name, her mother gave me the name Ramblin’.

Rick: Do you have any advice for people, whether they’re young or they’re older, any lessons learned?

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: See, I don’t consider myself a real bona fide music lover. I love some music and I hate some music. But, a music lover, in my mind, is somebody that says, “I love all music.” I think anyone who likes all music is probably deaf.

Rick: And I just want to let you know that I appreciate your legacy, what you’ve done and what you’ve done for American music over the years. I want to thank you.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: It’s very, very nice to meet you, sir. And I’d love to maybe read a copy of your magazine. I’ve never had the pleasure.

Rick: It’s on-line and it’s free. Lots of interviews of a lot of people you know. It’s a passion of mine. And good luck to you and I hope you have a wonderful life.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: It’s been pretty good so far, thanks a lot. And I’m looking forward to another 100 years. I’m not gonna ride any bulls anymore or any of that stuff, but I really wanted to be a cowboy. Still do.

Rick: Thank you very much, Jack.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Wonderful. God bless you. Great to meet you. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

BONUS VIDEOs – RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOT & FRIENDS

(John Prine – Arlo Guthrie – Jerry Jeff Walker – Beck – Sarah Lee Guthrie)