I first met Marc in 1960, at the Newport Folk Festival. Dan Hankin and I had bicycled up from NYC, and Marc drove in from Ann Arbor with Perry Lederman — whom we knew from New York — and with Al Young. We spent a good bit of time with them that weekend. A few years later, when I moved to Berkeley, CA, for graduate school, I ran into Marc again at Lundberg’s vintage instrument shop, a mecca of the ‘60s folk scene. After that, I’d see him at his own shop in lower Manhattan when I went back to visit my family in New York.
A decade later, I moved to Santa Fe, NM, and opened my own vintage instrument shop, inspired by those places. Marc wrote me a letter and said, “Let me know if you need $$$ to buy instruments.” I never forgot that. He also came out to visit and stayed at my sister’s house. She and I had small houses on either end of an unpaved, dead-end street on the outskirts of town. Our landlords were Charlie and Loretta Maxwell, one of the few Black families in Santa Fe at that time, and their church was also on that street, right next to my sister’s house. On Sunday morning, I walked down to have breakfast with them, and Marc and Stephanie were sitting on the front steps listening to the riveting singing emanating from the church. Marc said something like, “This is as good as it gets.” “Yeah,” I said, “every Sunday.” He shook his head. “Wow!”
After I moved back to California in 1980, we continued to be in touch. Over the years, I’ve bought a number of instruments from him and sold a number of instruments to him.
And I haven’t even mentioned Marc’s guitar superb playing and singing. Or his let’s-cut-through-the-bullshit sense of humor.
It’s been a long friendship and always a pleasure, because Marc is and always has been a mensch.
— Jay Feldman, May, 2024