IN five years of covering Indo-China, first for Associated Press and then for TIME, Ottawa-born James Wilde has made friends ranging from opium smugglers and pedicab drivers to Buddhist priests and politicians.

Among the most important of the friends is Prince Souvanna Phouma, one of the two rival "Premiers" of Laos. Fortnight ago, neutralist Prince Souvanna sent an aide to Wilde's hotel room in Pnompenh, Cambodia, to tell him he had just half an hour to get one of the best stories of his career: a trip to the Communist side of the front in Laos. Wilde hurried aboard the Ilyushin-14 that was waiting at Pnompenh airport to fly Souvanna north.

He was a most unwelcome guest; the Russians took him only because Souvanna insisted. The first night Wilde spent restricted to his hotel, without a visa, in Communist Hanoi.

During a week at the rebel stronghold in north-central Laos, reports Wilde, "I was followed wherever I went." The Viet Minh "technicians," who are manning everything from the howitzers to the hospital, made threatening gestures whenever he came near. "The Russians were of course furious at my taking pictures of their planes. At one point, there was some question whether they would transport me back to Pnompenh. But Souvanna intervened, and I was taken along."

The Russians had reason to be angry. Correspondent Wilde brought out with him a point-by-point documentation of the ominous arms buildup in northern Laos. It was a rare account of just how world Communism stage-manages a "people's revolution" (see FOREIGN NEWS).

MUSIC personalities, both performers and critics, somehow seem to start their careers on the piano. This week's cover subject, Soprano Leontyne Price, had a doll piano at three, took her first lessons at 3 1/2. Her TIME Boswell, Contributing Editor Richard Murphy, first studied piano at four; his researcher, Ruth Brine, who joined in the long interviews with Soprano Price, began piano at three. Murphy, the son of Columbia University Music Professor Howard Ansley Murphy, became an opera addict at ten, recalls falling in love with Madame Butterfly as a frequent standing-room auditor in his early teens. But it was only last week, after four years and four cover stories as TIME music critic, that Murphy heard his most "beautiful" Cio-Cio-San--sung by Miss Price.

Researcher Brine, who has worked on more than a dozen TIME covers in her 16 years with the magazine, branched out into the violin at seven, still retains enough of her musical knowledge to coach her three children. Music Editor Murphy has not touched a piano since he enlisted in the Navy at 17 in 1944. His constant preoccupation on the job with music listening and concert going has given him a set of musical references that ranges from Pal Joey to Wozzeck, and a special affection for Verdi, Brahms, Wallingford Riegger and Charles Ives.

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