My grandfather was a “singin’ teacher” off and on during his life and made extra money giving singing lessons in between his other
entrepreneurial undertakings. I’m told that they didn’t call them music lessons in the Ozarks and the Arkansas “bottoms” where my ancestors are from. In those days because the pupils were taught to read music and sing acapella from church hymnals by identifying notes using the “do re mi fa so la ti do” method.
My uncle Harold was a singing teacher and a great song leader. I loved to listen to his voice throughout my entire life and when I hear one of the more recent Bob Dylan songs his voice always reminds me of Uncle Harold. I’m sure that subliminally that’s one of the reasons I am such a big fan of Dylan today along with the fact that Bob is one of the greatest… well you already know that, I’m sure.
My parents were married and moved out of the Ozarks just after my dad came home from World War II. They moved out to California where my sister was born and lived there for a few years. Dad had heard that there were high paying jobs to be had in Detroit Michigan building cars and that’s where I was born in 1953. We lived there for a short time and then our family moved to Chicago for a couple of years.
I’ll write about the Motown/Motor City, and Chicago Blues musical
influence in my life in a later chapter, because now we are off to Texas!
My uncle R.J. had moved to Houston Texas and was a custom home
builder. It was R.J. that influenced my dads’ decision to move to Texas where he still lives today and where I lived from the age of three through the age of thirty-five when I met my Sweet Sue and moved to Missouri. I am often teased by my lifelong Texas friends about being a Yankee.
I always tell them that although I was born in Detroit, I got myself down to Texas as soon as I could!
One of the earliest memories is of myself and my sister in the back seat of an old Chevy with Mom and Dad in the front seat singing our hearts out on our move to Texas. So long ago and early in my life that the memory is almost like a dream except for the fact that I vividly remember that we were all so relieved to finally see the city of Houston, then the street that my Uncle R.J. lived on, then his house! We got there right about dusk and I remember how darn hot it seemed in Texas.
Texas was where I first started making music and “Texas Music” has
always been a love of mine, and it’s had a profound influence on the music I play and love.
I’ll get into “Texas Music” in more detail later.
During my early years we made many trips by automobile to Arkansas
to visit relatives. We always spent a good portion of the long hours on the road giving voice to tunes like “You get a line and I’ll get a pole”, along with many of the popular songs of the day, and of course some of the church hymns we sang every Sunday and Wednesday evenings of my entire young life.
My mom and dad both had beautiful voices and my mother spent many
hours teaching me and my sister about harmony, and rhythm, how to
sing in falsetto, etc.
In the next installment I’ll write about the earliest musical influences outside of my family.
