Music of the Mountains Flashback Episode: Harry Tuft

This week's Music of the Mountains brings back interviews with Harry Tuft, founder of the Denver Folklore Center, to hear from him about his experiences in the Colorado music scene. This interview was partially sourced for this week's Music of the Mountains column, recounting the story of The Beatles performing in their only Colorado show, at Red Rocks, in 1964.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 2:47

We want to make sure we keep it up to date with all the great music events and the P2P theory of the floor. Eldora mounted resources. Get the other traffic on I-70 and head to Eldora for good vibes all season office. Eldora is your go-to spot for non-stop winter five with great local skiing and riding for local DJs and the app rate music series. Don't miss the full moon ski tour, the timber's rail jam, or the morning uphill grind. Get all the details and check out weekly events at eld-or-a eldora.com. See you on the mountain. Do you mind introducing yourself real quick?

SPEAKER_02 3:28

My name is Harry Tuft, and I live in Denver. For many years ran a store called the Denver Folklore Center. Have been involved with a wonderful folk organization called Swallow Hill Music Association. And these days I am mostly retired, but I have sort of a second occupation as a singer and musician.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

And you were performing at the United Center when I conducted this interview, weren't you?

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yes, I am. I'm performing with Rich Moore and with a group that I'm a part of called Grubstake. And our concert is October the 28th, a Saturday evening in Idaho Springs at the center, and I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Just so you know, the other members of Grubstake will be shouted out later in this episode. But for now, let's talk about you, Harry. What's your musical journey been? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Well, I grew up in Philadelphia in a Jewish family, and typical of Jewish families, the parents like to involve the kids in music. And so at an early age I started to take piano lessons and then uh a little later on clarinet lessons, and through a counselor at a summer camp, I saw a thing called a ukulele, which seemed really interesting. And I started to play the ukulele, which led to the baritone ukulele, and eventually added the two strings to a baritone, which makes it into a six-string guitar. But music was in my life and in my family life. My father was a real audiophile. He loved classical music and opera. And every night at dinner we would have music, mostly the traditional classical composers, Beethoven and Mozart and folks like that. So I had music in the house, but up in my room on the third floor I had a radio. I've always been a late night person, so I would listen to the pop stations of the day, but I also listened to the RB stations as well. And I loved to sing, so I would find myself singing along to a lot of the songs of the what we now call Great American Songbooks. But to me, they were just the popular songs of the day. My favorites were particularly Nat King Cole, Joe Stafford, Harry Como. And I liked them because they sang straight. Folks like Frank Sinatra, who liked to be creative with his style, were not as interesting to me somehow. So music has really always been in the forefront for me, although my father was a doctor and he wanted me to be a doctor, so when I went to college, I went into a pre-med program, which ultimately really didn't work. Then in the late 50s, having graduated from the baritone ukulele to the guitar in the senior year at college, there was a folk song club that had been started that I joined, and they had invited Pete Seeger to a concert that I was able to help out with and attend, and really that got me started. And my mother's influence was also interesting in that she sent me an album, 10-inch album on Folkways by a guy named Leadbelly. And I put it on the turntable and I took it off right away. I thought it was terrible. Couldn't understand the words or anything. Well, it took me about six months and two more tries until I got the beauty of Hughie Leadbetter, better known as Leadbelly, known by a lot of folks for a couple of songs that got quite popular, one called Goodnight Irene, and the other called Midnight Special. And that really got me off into the blues. I learned about Big Bill Brunzi from three Frenchmen in a Paris record shop who were amazed that I, as an American, didn't know who Big Bill Poonzie was. And when I got back to Philadelphia and graduating from college in the late 50s, there was a coffee house there called Gilded Cage. And every Sunday they had a thing they called a Hootmanny. Uh Hootmanny was also ki I guess not yet popular on TV, but they called it a Hootmanny, and it was really a song circle. And I started to play there and and learn songs, and rapidly my attention was turning away from education. Or I had already given up on medicine and I was in graduate school in architecture, and I pretty much gave up on that and decided to travel out to Colorado because I'd skied in college and I thought maybe I could make a living playing in the bars and skiing and playing the bars and ski areas. And that sort of worked out. I mostly worked in restaurants and I didn't get a whole lot of chance to ski and practically no chance to actually make music. But it got me out in this area. I came out here first in 1960. Got the idea to open a store here from a wonderful guy named Hal Newstetter, who ran a club in Denver called the Exodus. He thought that a folklore center in Denver might be a good part-time thing. So I traveled around for a year and came back, and long story short, I actually opened the Denver Folklore Center in 1962. So I put my music secondary to the business of running a store. And I ran it for 50 years, being able to play music. Then about 10 years into it, I was able to get together with two fellas to do some music, and we eventually started a group called Grubstake. And as Grubstaker, we were together for over 40 years. One of the fellas was having some physical problems and felt it was time to take a break. So we didn't do anything for a couple of years. And then just recently we were part of a benefit for a wonderful woman who had been instrumental in keeping Swallow Hill alive. And so we did a few songs there, and I realized that if it was okay with the other two fellas, we could be a part of this concert up in Idaho Springs. So in fact, that is what's going to happen. So Grove Steak will do a set, and then Richmore will accompany me, we'll do a set, and hopefully be entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

It was at this point I asked Harry Tuft what his experience writing songs was like. Well, I'm not a songwriter. So that means you primarily perform covers?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

These days they call them covers, yeah. I used to say I do OPS, I do other people's songs. Somewhere along the way, the label cover, I guess you would say, I do covers. But I also learned a lot of music, as I mentioned, out of the Great American Songbook. They were just songs of the day when I was growing up in the 50s. And by the 60s, when I got involved with folk music, I just gave up on those songs. And mostly I was taken with traditional folk. And I was really into the traditional side. So the only non-traditional person I respected was Woody Guppy. He was the only writer. And I was that way until this guy named Bob Dylan came along. And so I began to change my ways. And then in 1964, a man named Manny Greenhill called the store and introduced himself, and I knew his name from the magazines of the day. And he said that he was uh manager of Joan Bias and wanted to bring her to Denver. Would I be interested in promoting her in a concert? And I said, Well, Manny, you got two problems. One, I've never promoted a concert, and two, I don't have any money. And he said, Well, as far as the first, I'll walk you through it. And second, I'll put up any money that's needed for deposits, and then I'll give you 10% of the gross. Well, at the time, Joan Baez was the reigning folk princess of the day. And I said, Okay, I would do it. And so I arranged a concert at the Denver Auditorium Theater. It's now and turned into the Ellie Calkins Theater, but at the time, and it seated 2200. Well, I sold it out, and that started me on a series of promotions that were really wonderful to do and help go to the bottom line of my store. So when Doom Bias came in 1964 in March, she arrived by train. She didn't like planes. And she arrived alone, no entourage. But while we were driving around, she was looking from the two rock and roll stations, Kim and KBTR. She's trying to find Beatles songs. And here was this reigning folk princess who was enamored of the Beatles. And I thought that was just amazing and crazy. But it also opened up my eyes to the Beatles. And by that time I sort of was on my way to appreciating a lot of the American singer songwriters, Tom Paxton and Eric Anderson, and later on Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman, wonderful writers, Steve Goodman. And then later, even than that, the writers that came out of Austin, Texas, Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett. And so my repertoire these days includes all of those things. And then about ten years ago, I suddenly realized that all these songs that were sitting in the back of my head that were these great American songbook songs were really pretty good songs. And so I actually started to try to play them. I play the guitar. I just play it to accompany myself. I just love to sing. And so my arrangements of those wonderfully more complicated arrangements of songs in their original, I would do in a sort of more funky way, but it seemed to work pretty well. And then, oh, going on maybe almost a decade ago, Rich Moore and I started to do things together, and of course, Rich, who is a wonderfully accomplished guitarist, could add those great chords to some of those songs. So that's how things have evolved. Globestake is pretty much a folky group. We do songs that are generally not known. We don't do the pop folk songs, but all our songs are, we hope and we think, entertaining and interesting, and many of them are ballads. We love ballads. And then Rich and I do a wide variety of things, anywhere from the Great American Songbook to Rhythm and Blues to Blues to Folk. So it makes for hopefully a pretty entertaining evening.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

What stuck out to you about choosing which songs from the Great American Songbook you wanted to perform? Sure. Well, I think it's a combination.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

The ones that I enjoy always have an interesting, not always lovely, but an interesting melody. And they almost always tell some sort of a story. Although, of course, uh a lot of them are love songs, and the story is really just very often unrequited love. But I also have a fascination for chords and unusual uses of chords. The Beatles were incredible in the way they thought of chordal arrangements, putting different chords in where other folks might have put them. And so I'm a sucker for a story and I'm a sucker for a melody. And when you put those together, it just comes out really well. I got into Nat King Cole when he was accompanied by a large orchestra, Nelson Riddle, and his biggest hits were with a large orchestra. But I learned about the King Cole trio, which preceded those hits, and realized that Nat King Cole was an incredible player, and some of those songs are wonderful. So I do a couple of songs out of the trio, one called Straighten Up and Fly Right, another one called Frim Fram Sauce. And I also, on an album that I made a while back, do a song that I actually learned from one of those RB stations in the 50s called Mint Juga. So I I like lots of different kinds of songs, but I also know and can sing without any sheet music a number of ballads that go anywhere from eight to twelve verses just because I love the stories that are involved.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Keep in mind, this guy who basically just said that he still memorizes songs that are eight to twelve verses long, is almost 90 years old. I couldn't help but keep the Joan Baez story in mind after being completely floored by it. And I had to ask, who else did you promote back in the day?

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Well, since Nanny also handled Pete Seeger, I brought Pete Seeger, and then there was another wonderful promoter, uh manager out of New York City. Nanny was out of Boston named Harold Leventhal. Harold managed Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger in one part of the country. So I brought Judy Collins here. I did a promotion with Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Harold and I were talking and he called and he asked, How would Pete Seeger do at Red Rock? I said, Well, he would be okay, but he wouldn't sell out. He said, What about Arlo Guthrie? I said, same. He said, What about the two of them? I said, Well, some called sellouts for those. And so I put on the first concert that the two of them did together. And I brought them twice. And I also brought Vias here five times, first to the Auditorium Theater, three times to Red Rocks, and one time to the Auditorium Arena. And Vias at the time, the first time I brought her to Red Rocks, wanted to meet the Beatles. So I scheduled a concert two days after the Beatles concert and was able to work it out so that she could meet the Beatles. And I was fortunate enough to stand in the back of the dressing room and watch the four of them interact with Baez, which was probably the most outstanding memory that I guess. If I were to ask, what is one memory that you had? It was that experience. And then when they went on stage, we went and basically we were backstage where we walked out of the edge of the stage almost, and we looked back at the Beatles and we couldn't hear them because even though the speaker was right above us, the screams of the kids, mostly girls, were so loud that they drowned out any sort of sound. And it was almost physical. You could only feel the energy penetrate your body. It was pretty incredible. I also brought the mamas and papas to the auditorium arena. I did a series of concerts at the auditorium theater with a folk group by the name of Ian and Sylvia, a bluegrass group, Earl Scruggs, a Ravi Shankar, the wonderful Indian guitar master, and the Charles Lloyd Quartet, and that was space six weeks apart over several months. I did a love-in on the West Bank of the Natural History Museum, what now is called the Museum of Nature and Science, with the Grateful Dead and Captain Beef Hart and some local groups. So I had a chance to do some promotions that were really enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

That is absolutely incredible. And through bringing all of these artists to perform at venues in Colorado and sharing your own music and sharing all these songs from the Great American Songbook, what has stuck out to you most about performing live and sharing all of that music with an audience? Nothing beats the live audience.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

I started more than 20 years ago doing a once-a-month Koot Nanny at Twell Hill. We called it an old-fashioned Kuten Annie, but really was what we now call an open mic or an open stage. And I did that up until the pandemic, and then when the pandemic hit, I switched to the as a Zoom performance, and I continue to do that. But we have anywhere from 20 to 30 folks who are willing to open up and do one song. It's sort of like a Zoom open stage kind of. And then for a number of years now, I've done a cafe series where I invite one other guest that I call Harry Ann. I've had lots of different folks. And in fact, the next one coming up at Swallow Hill on October 19th is a wonderful guitarist by the name of Pat Donahue. So I still keep my hand in and I love it. Nothing beats being able to stand in front of a group of people and engage them in the music either in listening or hopefully sometimes joining in. I love to do songs that are familiar to people. And I think I can imagine that someone like Taylor Swift, who has thousands in an arena of people who know all her songs, who stops singing and just lets the audience sing. I can't imagine that it's not the greatest reward that she gets out of performing. To have that kind of a response from the audience. I don't think there's anything that beats it.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

And is there anything in particular you hope that people will be able to take away from your shows when they come and see you? I'm a big believer in what makes up a community.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

And it can be all different kinds of communities. I was fortunate enough to be able to help establish Swallow Hill, and Swallow Hill has a wonderful community. I've been a part of lots of other kinds of communities, including the folks around Idaho Springs and Georgetown and Silver Plume. And the first musician I met in Colorado was a fellow named George Downing. And George and I were friends from that first week in December of 1960 until he died some years ago. George did a melodrama in Silver Plum for over 30 years. And they were all newly written every year. I think he did 34 of them. And George inspired a whole community of players and listeners up and down in that whatever you might call that valley, anywhere between Idaho Springs and Silver Plume. I actually got married in Idaho Springs, but that's another story. And so I always think of it as returning to Idaho Springs as being the area that I first came to, and it holds a very special place in my heart.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Well, I would say that I really love to sing. I've been really fortunate to have been able to find audiences that are willing to come and share my music, and particularly blessed with the association with Jack Stonesco and Steve Abbott in the group Grubstake, and delighted that we're able to reform to do some music. Making music for me is nothing like it.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

It's just wonderful. I think I've probably bent your ear long enough. But I wasn't done bending his ear quite yet. Funnily enough, around the time that I conducted this interview, my dad had gotten into a tangent online where he started watching concerts from none other than Arlo Guthrie and Pete Steeger. I was very surprised that I was talking to the man who brought them together in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

The second time that I brought them, there actually was a recording truck from the Wally Hyder Studios in LA that recorded the concert. And apparently the truck followed them to several concerts. And I don't think that the Red Rocks one made it into the recording, but there's actually a double album of Pete and Arlo that came out of that tour.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

In case you're curious, the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater website, RedRocksOnline.com, officially lists the event of Arlo Guthrie and Pete Steager at Red Rocks as having taken place on Friday, August 16th, 1974. And in 1975, the album Pete Steager and Arlo Guthrie Together in concert was released. I also told Harry that I thought I remembered that Pete Steager at one point played with his family, although I told him I could have been thinking of something else.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Maybe something else, because mostly out of the both of their families. I mean, Arlo later on did stuff, I think, with his wife and daughter. In those earlier days, it was just the two of them. I actually was quite friendly with Arlo's first accompanist, who actually came from Philadelphia, whom I knew in Philadelphia, and was a wonderful guy who died way too young. Anyway, that was a connection that I had to Arlo. I've been fortunate enough to be kind of a transmitter of songs for some of the artists. I got to know Judy Collins pretty well and would on pretty frequent occasions send her songs that I thought were interesting, some of which she ended up adding to her repertoire. I actually sent a song. To Arlo was a Dylan film called Christie's film that he was looking for. And early on in New York City, I was friendly with uh fellows named Dick Weissman, with whom I'm still friendly. And he was forming a group with two other guys called the Journeyman. And I was traveling from Philly to New York on weekends, and the other two guys were John Phillips and Scott McKenzie. And John Phillips later became Papa John of the Mamas and Papas. And we would sit around and sing songs. I sang all these songs that I'd learned from kind of a mentor of mine in Philadelphia. And sure enough, some of those songs ended up in John's repertoire. So I felt good that I was a bit of a transmitter of songs.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

What I may have actually been thinking of is a performance that happened much, much, much later with Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger with the Guthrie family at Carnegie Hall in NYC on November 30th, 2013, which you can actually find on the YouTube channel BDM. To be honest, I couldn't even stop bending Harry's ear after we finished this interview, which was conducted on October 2nd, 2023. No, I had to call him again for more clarification on a certain story. Remember how he said he got married in Idaho Springs and that was a story for another time? Well, it's another time. And frankly, if no one else is, I'm curious about it. So I called him again yesterday, June 27, 2024, to talk to him again about that particular story. To hear more about Harry Tuft and to hear John McEwen, stay tuned after the ad break. Self-defense does not require athleticism. It just requires determination and a desire to learn.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

That's just been today. Perhaps it's a trip to a farm.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Welcome back. And now to continue with Harry Tuft. Are you alright with talking about your marriage in Idaho Springs?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Okay. Well, when I came out to Colorado for the first time, I had been given a tip on places where I could work, and one of them was in Georgetown. And that was actually the first place I went to was a place called the Holy Cat, run by Phil and Elise Main. And I went in and said I was a folk singer looking for work. And he said, Come back Monday, you're hired. It was as easy as that. And my hope was to be able to make music. As it turned out, mostly what I did was wash dishes, wait tables, run the bar, and then if all of that was taken care of, then I would have a chance to make some music. It was really not the setup that I had hoped would be, but it was a way to get into Colorado. And that was in December of 1960. And I was there for about a month, and a girl, we were pretty young at that point, that I had gone with in Philadelphia where I'm from, but had broken up with, found out that I had come out to Colorado, and she made her way out here to follow me. Well I'd been here for a month and probably feeling kind of lonely, so she wanted to stay, and I said okay. But the problem was the two of us staying together. We couldn't afford two places and we could not rent even a room or an apartment as an unmarried couple in Colorado in nineteen sixty. So I was working at the Holy Cat and she had worked I forget exactly where actually, but I think it was in Idaho Springs. And we both worked until late in the evening, but I went to a Justice of the Peace on the Colorado Avenue in Idaho Springs and asked him if he would marry us at a late evening time, and he agreed. So that's what we did. I picked Jackie up and we drove to Idaho Springs, and we got married by this Justice of the Peace. Kind of unceremoniously, I guess you would say. And in those days, living together, as you can tell by the story, was not common. And while we would have been fine with it, the world around us was not. We stayed together. We went from Denver to Aspen, worked in Aspen, went from Aspen to Leto and Mill Valley, California. And by the summer, by August, our relationship had deteriorated such that we went back to Philadelphia and separated.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

And that was my first marriage of about eight months. Do you mind if I ask if the split was amicable? If you guys kept in contact after that?

SPEAKER_02 27:52

No, it was not a happy separation. I was the one who wanted the separation. She did not. So it was not very amicable. And eventually it got dissolved or divorced. But she stayed in Philadelphia. I came back to Denver and I got the idea from Hal Newstetter, who ran the Exodus Folk Club in Denver, that maybe a folklore center of the kind that was in the village would be something that a person could make a part-time living on, and having had that idea and not having any real prospect for anything else. And I was still on a leave of absence from graduate school in architecture, but I could see that that future was not going to work for me. So as a result, I decided that I would return to Denver, which I did, and started the Denver Folklore Center.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Am I allowed to ask how many marriages you've had? Only two. And are you currently married?

SPEAKER_02 28:44

No, I'm not. My second wife and I amicably divorced but remained friends. And we have two daughters. The four of us traveled together, and we have an uncommonly good relationship. And we just we lived separately in Denver, and now she lives in Chicago. But we meet up a couple of years ago. I flew to Chicago. We took the City of New Orleans train down to New Orleans to the New Orleans Jazz Festival. And I feel very fortunate that we have had a very good relationship, that we're really very, very, very good friends and understand each other quite well. We were together for 29 years before we separated. And so the family that is able to stay together as we have is really better off.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

I don't think anybody would dispute that. I felt kind of bad focusing on Harry's personal life for so long, so I wanted to switch back to the Denver Folklore Center because I read online, admittedly on Wikipedia, that Harry initially owned and founded the Denver Folklore Center, then sold it, then bought it back, then ultimately moved on. And I wanted to ask him if that was true. Yes, that's true.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Well, I started the store in 1962. By 1979, it was really not profitable. I had gotten folks together to start Swallow Hill using the concert hall and the school, both of those entities I had developed over the years. So Swallow Hill was able to continue, but I closed the retail aspect from that location on 17th Avenue. At the same time, my repair shop manager, Rick Kirby, wanted to continue. So I gave him the inventory and the name, and he opened up on South Broadway, where he tried to make a goal of it for three years. And when it was clear that it was not going to go any longer, I came back in and paid off the debts and reclaimed the name. Swallow Hill had been in that building as well when that entity closed in eighty three, eighty-two or eighty three. Swallow Hill continued finding places to work from in order to do concerts and instruction. Eventually coming to South Pearl Street, uh Jewell Avenue in South Pearl. After ten years of doing other things, I decided to reopen the store and found a location just across the street from Swallow Hill, which seemed like a good idea. And so that was in '93 that I started the folklore center up again. In the interim, a couple of other similar kinds of stores had opened that also had a pretty good run. One of which is the Old Town Picken Parlor in Old Town, Arvada, run by Kit Simon. And it continues to this day. And Kit's is mostly an instrument shop, whereas my shop started as a real folk shop with not just instruments but recordings and books and accessories and lessons, things like that. And as the world turned more toward guitars as a business, my shop became more of a guitar shop. And when I did finally sell it in 2016 to Saul Rosenthal and Claude Brockfeld, it really was essentially a guitar shop, and it was a guitar shop that they were most interested in having.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

So I assume that your primary focuses right now are Swallow Hill and your music career.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Yeah, I mean I honestly don't do anything more at Swallow Hill than the performances that I do, although I'm available for any consulting or any ideas that people seem valuable and ask me for. But it is a wonderfully run organization that has done incredibly well over the years. So I turned my attention to performing, really. And the other thing is I accumulated an awful lot of stuff over the years. I used the store as a repository for that stuff, ended up with a couple of storage units, which I work pretty steadily at trying to lower down. And I'm actually having an event in July coming up next month on the 28th. That's based on the fact that a friend of mine who wanted to support a portrait artist had the artist make a portrait of me at Swallow Hill. And on the 28th, we're going to have the dedication of the portrait. I'm going to bring a lot of the stuff that relates to Swallow Hill and the Folklore Center to that event to give away. And then we'll have a song circle folks sticking around just to play some music. There'll be in a story core kind of a booth for people who care to talk about sort of the old days to do that. We can archive some of those memories. And that should be an enjoyable afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

And I assume the show that you talked about in the previous interview is also still going on. Yeah, Harry Ann starts up again in the fall in September.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

We'll try to do about five a year. And yeah, I'm still negotiating for my September artists, but I'll announce it as soon as I have it nailed down, so to speak. And I see Zoom Hoot. There'll be another Zoom Hoot a week from tomorrow that I do with any performers who'd like to come online, play a song, sometimes two songs.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I wanted to clarify something that happened during the second interview. During the second interview, I gave a bit of a prelude that didn't end up making it into this episode. But the way I introduced him, it sounded like I said his name was Harry Tufts with a plural instead of Harry Tuft as a singular. Now, I did not say Harry Tufts, but the way it came through in the phone, it definitely sounded like I did. So I just wanted to clarify that, especially since it sets up this joke.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

I answered anything, particularly this lunchtime.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Thank you so much to Harry for coming on board and joining us for the podcast, not once, but twice, even though this is the first time we're in either interview. You can check out the article that I wrote for him promoting his show at the United Center with Rich Moore and Grubstake in the October 12, 2023 edition of The Mountain Ear. You can also see more of him online. I found a couple of different things from him, even though I believe his website, Harrytuft.com, is officially taken down. I found an interview from him with the National Association of Music Merchants, and I found out that he was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame on February 12, 2012. You can find tons of stuff like this online. Just search for Harry Tuft. I'm sure you'll find some of that stuff. In 1976, he released an album called Across the Blue Mountains, which is actually available at least on Spotify. I've not been able to find his other albums online: Grub Steak from 1977, Favorite Folk Songs Minus Guitar, and his brand new Harry Tuft and Friends album, Treasures Untold. However, I do have a copy of Treasures Untold, so I'm sure you can find it somewhere online wherever CDs are sold. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in to this week's Music of the Mountains, Where to Be and What to Be brought to you by the Mountain Ear Podcast. We'll be back very soon with another episode. If you have any suggestions or questions about the paper or the podcast, be sure to reach out to me at media at the mountainair.com. My co-host Tyler Hickman at T Y L E R atheMountainair.com or editor and Keith Barbara Heart at infotemountain.com or at front desk at themountainair.com. This interview was originally aired in the second retrospective episode of the Mountain Air Podcast. It also featured an interview with John McEwen of the Nedigator event. Be sure to check out the full episode of your friend John as well. Have a great rest of your day.