THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE of this picture is the same fellow 20 years later...That's me in the back. Big Bear believed in the power of the songs all his life. The old men gave me their songs to preserve in a great building in Washington that would never burn down...the Smithsonian Institution. I sometimes played back the cylinder to the Indian who made it. One bewildered woman said to me: "How did the machine learn the song so quick? That is a hard song."

Picture: Densmore and singers at WCCO radio: George Big Bear, his father Joe Big Bear, Frances Densmore, William Potter, LOC