A Big Fan

A Big Fan

I Have always loved music. From the time I was a little boy I have had a tune in my head. It never stops. It changes constantly but it's always there. Maybe that's why I have always loved to sing. I could always be heard outside singing songs and making up my own lyrics to songs. I got that from Dad. He loved music too. He would fall asleep listening to Mozart or Beethoven and his hand or foot would still be keeping time to the music in his sleep. I love all kinds of music form pop and rock to classical but country has always been my first love. There's nothing like a good ole country song.




When I was seven years old, my parents noticed that I seemed to have some musical talent so they signed me up for Hawaiian guitar lessons. Guitar lessons were a cool idea but I wanted to play like Chet Atkins not some guy in a grass skirt. The other problem was that the teacher I had at the conservatory of music was probably the worst music teacher that ever lived. There were about ten kids in one class and he spent most of the hour screaming at us and telling us that we were stupid maggots who didn't deserve his trouble.




Needless to say that turned me off on guitar lessons and when the time came that Mom and Dad had to either buy my guitar or give it back we gave it back and I quit. That was it for me and Hawaiian guitar lessons.




A few years later my cousin bought a Spanish guitar and started trying to learn to play it. It looked like fun so I talked him into showing me everything that he had learned. You know what? It was fun. Now I wanted a guitar. I wanted a guitar more than anything in the world. Every chance I got to play with a guitar had it in my hands. Whenever I saw a guitar at any ones house I would ask if I could play with it. Almost everyone said yes but the problem was that those guitars were often unused and so they were also untuned. That meant that whenever Dad heard me with a guitar in my hands it sounded like hell.




I begged for a guitar. I didn't care. Any old guitar would do. It didn't have to be new. It didn't even have to be in good shape. I didn't know the difference anyway. It just had to have six strings and be tuneable but Dad remembered the Hawaiian guitar fiasco and refused to waste money on a guitar that, "I would just lose interest in a few weeks later."



As I related in an earlier story, I finally got the guitar thanks to Mom. As soon as I got it home I got started. I tuned it up and I was away. A few days later Dad realized that I was really learning and fast too so he set up lessons for me with a man in town. Private lessons and with a real musician and I actually learned stuff. Six months later my teacher said he had taught me everything he knew and I was back on my own. He told me where to get more private lessons but suggested that since he hadn't been able to break me of playing by ear, and he had given me all the basics, perhaps I was best to continue on my own.




Today I sit here a retired musician with twenty-five years of professional music under my belt. Most of that time I was a bass player in Country and Blues bands. From the day I turned professional, until the day I retired I was never without a gig for more than a few weeks, unless I wanted to be. My career as a musician holds many wonderful memories for me. It was a whole other life apart from my real life and I wouldn't trade that time for anything. If it hadn't been for my mother I might never have gotten that guitar and might never have embarked on a part of my life that made me many friends and many wonderful memories.




By the way . . . the guy who wouldn't buy me that guitar bought me a new and better one as soon as I started those lessons he set up. He was my second biggest fan until the day that he died. I played on the night of his memorial service. The entire band dedicated their performance to Dad.