Roy Bookbinder

He disappeared from the recording industry.

He spent his entire career working medicine shows, little carnival deals throughout the South.

He worked with Chief Thundercloud's medicine show up until about 1959.

When I met him, he was retired.

He had a heart attack and didn't tour at all.

And when I met Pink, he was not in great shape.

But me and my friend Paul Jeremiah started to visit him.

At one point, we realized the worst thing about his health was he was starving to death down there.

And he started to play again, and we took him out on tour once before he died, and it was quite a deal.

Pink Anderson's music, he was a carnival performer, and his songs were white, black, and blue.

You know, they were mixed up.

The song that I'm going to do next, Traveling Man, has become my theme song, and it's a song that everybody in the folk field always identified with Pink Anderson, knowing that he probably didn't write it.

But it's a song that goes back to minstrel shows.

and it was probably a song written by a white man on Broadway.

Like, so many times you get a song from a New York writer on Broadway, what was Tin Pan Alley, and it filters down to the rural community, and then it's found by some folklorist as a, what a find.

It happened throughout the history of country music and blues.

Sure can.

This is the old Traveling Man song.

It came a long way.

Well, I just want to tell you about a man named Boone.