My Search for Vernon McAlister
By Sir Allen Issac - Hear Introduction

Vernon McAlister was a legend. He was a wandering guitar man for whom the Depression never ended. He traveled back roads and lived in the woods. Always he had his treasured steel-bodied National resonator guitar. He did odd jobs, played his hauntingly strange music for food and then disappeared into the landscape. He had eyes like a hunted animal, people said. Sometimes a sound would startle him and he would bolt into the woods with his guitar. Only once did he leave the guitar behind.
The first stories of this wild guitar man began to emerge in the late nineteen-thirties. They continued through the forties, fifties and sixties with he protagonist virtually unchanged except for age. It seemed like he went right through a World War and a Cold War without ever noticing.
When I first learned of this character I was traveling through Tennessee looking for Mountain music that harked back to old Scots ballads. I was talking to musicians and recording. I made hundreds of recordings and found some clear connections between the Old World and the new. On my travels I came in contact with the story of the vagabond musician.
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