Horst Lippmann, on the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival tour that traveled behind the Iron Curtain. From I Am the Blues by Willie Dixon with Don Snowden (Da Capo Press, 1989).

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I had a very funny problem with Wolf. When we played Poland and East Germany, he got the salary paid partly in dollars but we had to take 50 percent in local currency, which is not convertible, so we had to spend it in the country.

Willie [Dixon] bought himself a mink hat which was stolen, Hubert Sumlin bought some jewels and stuff, and Wolf didn’t know what to buy so he said, ‘Give it to the YMCA.’ I said, ‘But Wolf, there is no YMCA. This is a communist country.’ He said, ‘The YMCA is everywhere.’