I don’t remember when, why, or how I learned “San Antonio Rose.” I assume I heard it on a Bob Wills record, but even that’s up for grabs — it’s been done by so many people, including people I would have seen live rather than hearing them on record. For example, John Lincoln Wright, who ruled the Boston Area country scene when I was coming up.

That’s not a scene most people are aware of — virtually nobody outside New England, and plenty of New Englanders missed it as well. But it was a solid bar-band scene in the 1970s, ’80s, maybe getting into the ’90s… though by then I remember Lincoln complaining that the line-dance craze was killing it.

I didn’t know Lincoln well, but I liked to drop in occasionally at the Plough and Stars — in memory, that was where I had my first drink of Irish whiskey, though the dates don’t work out; I’m guessing it was actually where I had my first legal drink of Irish whiskey in a bar, bought by my friend and washboard player Rob Forbes when I turned eighteen.  Anyway, that was Lincoln’s regular hang-out, and I hung out with him there a few times.

I admired Lincoln as a singer, bandleader, songwriter, and for nurturing a small, valuable scene. There were a lot of people who thought of him that way, and he knew and appreciated us, but he clearly thought he should have done better. He’d had his moment as a rock star back in the 1960s, when MGM tried to promote the “Bosstown Sound” as an East Coast parallel to the San Francisco scene. His band, the Beacon Street Union, was their flagship group, and got some brief attention, but the overblown promotion probably did them more harm than good. So he went back to country music, which he’d always loved, and I always had the sense that he felt he’d missed the brass ring.

That said, he always had good bands and a devoted audience. I saw him perform a bunch of times, in various settings, including one of his annual jamborees at Jonathan Swift’s in 1986, which was memorable because it included Treat Her Right, and I gave them one of their first reviews — I particularly remember Mark Sandman, later to form Morphine, singing a song called “Doreen,” which somehow never made it onto a record. He was another guy I ran into at the Plough, though we never hung out together; he wasn’t there as often as Lincoln, and wasn’t as sociable.

Lincoln was sociable, and endlessly supportive to young musicians — at least, that was my experience. At some point in the 1980s I briefly got a manager who knew nothing about the music business and as a result called Jack’s, a legendary Cambridge club that would never have hired me, and for some reason they did, and some friends showed up and joined me on a few songs, and the owner was there and liked it and hired me to host an “Elijah Wald and Friends night…” though after the first one, Jack’s burned down…

…but that one night was something. On a side note, I heard a terrific singer playing on the street in Harvard Square that afternoon and invited her down, and she was noncommittal and didn’t show, and that was the first time I heard Tracy Chapman. But Kenny Holladay did show, and we played a version of “Mustang Sally” that brought down the house, and my erstwhile manager was recording and was surprised to find that on tape it was a complete mess, which I could have told her — I’m no Wilson Pickett, and you had to be there, but if you were, the energy covered over the flaws. There were some horn players as well, and I’m sure Robbie Phillips was there, and I don’t remember who-all else, but it was a fun night.

Jack’s was just down the street from the Plough, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask Lincoln to perform on my show — he was a star, I wouldn’t have dared — but I mentioned it to him and he said he’d drop by. To my surprise, he did and asked if he could sing something, and I was thrilled. So he asked if I could play “San Antonio Rose” in G, and, as I wrote in the beginning, I don’t remember how or why I’d learned it, but I could and did, and he sang it beautifully.

It wasn’t just a one-off, either. I will always be grateful to Lincoln for the fact that, although I’m pretty sure he was first aware of me as a writer for the Globe, he always treated me as a musician. If we were in the Plough and he introduced me to someone, it would be as a guitar player, and when I did my CD release party at Johnny D’s — where he’d played regularly for years before it transitioned from a neighborhood place into a major touring venue — he showed up again and sang “San Antonio Rose.”

He might have done another song as well, or come up to sing with me on choruses; and I think we performed together at least one other time. He was generous that way, happy to do a guest spot or sing harmony with someone who wasn’t in his league.

He was a beautiful singer, and a sweet guy.  Too many long days and nights at the Plough didn’t help his health and he went way too soon, and I miss him, and think of him whenever I hear this song. I always liked playing it, and I enjoy singing it, but he sang it way better.

I was going to stop there, but came across this taste of Lincoln singing one of his classics, “Too Old to Die Young,” right at the end of his career… he wasn’t looking too good, but still sounded great, and I wish he’d lived to be a hundred years old, despite his doubts.