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Folksinger, educator, and marine biologist Sam Hinton was born March 21, 1917 in Tulsa, OK; raised largely in Texas, after graduating high school he studied zoology at Texas A&M, helping fund his education via singing appearances. In 1936 he won a Major Bowes' Amateur Hour competition, leaving school to tour the country with the Bowes troupe; finally settling in Los Angeles three years later, Hinton enrolled at UCLA, concurrently landing a role in the musical comedy Meet the People alongside then-unknowns including Virginia O'Brien and Nanette Fabray. After graduating in 1940, Hinton was appointed director of the Desert Museum in nearby Palm Springs, three years later moving on the position of curator with the Scrippps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego; despite his professional duties, he continued performing, and in 1947 recorded the album Buffalo Boy and the Barnyard Song for the Library of Congress. Hinton's first commercial recording, "Old Ma...