The Early Years

I can remember when I was around 10 or 11 years old, my family had moved to the rural Madison County area near Owens Cross Roads, Alabama. Most of my life, all that I can remember, I have been around and/or involved in music. It started before conception when my mother (who had been told by doctors she could not have children) hired a skinny musician to play steel guitar in her band in Houston, TX. They married and to their surprise, I became the first of 3. He had a rare blood type and the rh negative factor which happened to be the only type compatible with my mother for having children. We all were born in Houston.

I vaguely recall Houston, bits of memory linger but mostly from old photos. Right after I started school, we moved from Texas to Alabama (where my mother was originally from) and ended up in the Huntsville area when my father took a job related to the space program. We had our little family music playing times but it was usually more me and my father. I remember he had a reel to reel tape recorder and we would record songs. He was creative and would use things like kitchen knifes for drum sticks for the unusual sounds. He also took his old Gibson steel guitar and made pedals for it. He had played the old C6 tuning all his life but the new craze out of Nashville was the E9 tuned pedal steels.

In 1962 we moved to Alabama and my dad started working in the space division of Chrysler. I went to several city schools as we moved a few times to various parts of the booming city. It was like 40,000 population then, it's over 300,000 now not counting the suburban areas.

I had a crush on a girl in the 2nd grade at Ridgecrest Elementary, her name was Martha Gurley. We later ended up going to junior high and high school together and graduated in the same class of '74 from New Hope High School. We never were sweethearts but I always remained having that crush on her. She grew up to be a beautiful tall woman and the last I heard was a Realtor® in the Huntsville area. I also attended Madison Pike (they changed the name to Morris Elementary years ago), Rison, East Clinton before we moved to the county. I attended Owens Cross Roads from the 5th grade through the 8th grade, then I attended New Hope for 1 year. This is where I first saw Frankie Kelly who upon my return to New Hope, from a year in Tennessee, became my high school sweetheart (more on this later).

I think it was East Clinton where I had a girl friend named Susan Osborn, she had long blonde hair and lived in a large Victorian home a few blocks from my house. I spent a lot of time at her house. I also had a friend name Eddie Wallace in that school, he died in a car wreck back in the 70's. I had lost contact with a lot of them after we moved to the country, except for the Brook's sisters. Terri was my girl friend, Karen was my brothers and not long after we moved, they also moved out to the country but not as far out as we had. They went to a school called Big Cove which years later consolidated with Owens Cross Roads if I recall. Karen would come by WGSV when I was working and their family was on the lake. Years later we visited on a vacation in Gulf Shores, Alabama. She was always one of the most beautiful females I had (have) ever seen. To this day, she remains in my mind as such.

When I was in the 5th grade, we moved to the country and my parents opened a country grocery store. It was in an area of Owens Cross Roads called Cherry Tree (well, we actually had a Gurley, AL address a New Hope Phone Company phone number and an OXR address). I remember it was confusing since our next door neighbor was a long distance phone call. We also had a party line and I remember the first time I found out how to get on a party line group call (first form of a chat room I can't remember what they called that back then). I met a girl named Brenda Emory who years later would still be a good friend (although I have lost contact with her in the last 5 - 10 years). After a few years at OXR school, I was able to sneak over and go to New Hope High School where Brenda was in school.

In junior high, I played on the basketball team although I wasn't that great at it. I did enjoy sports but later in high school you couldn't do both sports and the band and music was my first choice. I remember having 2 girl friends while at OXR, Debbie Neal, who was a year to 2 older than me and Ann Hatfield who was in the same class. She and I went together for quite a while. I remember the girls were just starting to wear pantyhose back then and credit those years to my fetish for women in pantyhose and girdles.

High School - During this time my family had met a few area musicians and singers from coming in the grocery store and we would have little jam sessions after the store closed. One of them was Joe Webb, a high school student at New Hope. I played the rhythm guitar and would sing. He had a friend named Jerry Moon who also would sing some and was a character. Energetic and fun. There was also John David (Hodges I think was his last name). He was older and somewhat of a light rebel rouser by the standards we were used to. He had a convertible thunderbird and I remember going down an open road one day with it just wide as open... my mother of course had a fit when she found out so no more riding in the cool car. She would let us go off with Joe who at that time had a VW beetle then a Chevy Corvair.

Joe also loved to mess with electronics and had a little "radio shack" out back of his house so I spent a lot of time there. We were always playing with records, tape recorders, and radio transmitters. I think the was the beginning of my interest in broadcasting although I had the electronics bug before we met Joe. He was about 3 or 4 years older than me but was like a brother. He spent more time at our house than anywhere else. We started playing music on a regular basis and he and Jerry Moon became a part of our family group we had called "The Silver Stars". In fact, a few years earlier, my dad and I had written a few songs and went to a recording studio in Birmingham and record my sister singing "Oh These Emotions" and "Try To Right The Things You Know Are Wrong". My brother Ricky played bass, I played lead guitar, my dad played steel guitar and we hired a drummer from Birmingham (Chip something).

We pressed it on a 45 on our own label (True Star Records) and would take it to some of the shows we would perform at. We got booked at several "Grand Ol' Opry" like shows in the Tarrant, AL area of Birmingham, some cable tv shows, and and such. When Joe and Jerry started with us, we went for an audition to be on a telethon. Jerry was going to sing "Hello Marylou" but when it came time for him to sing, He Froze Up! Stage fright big time! All that energy he had in his singing and dance was no where to be seen. So, we did our back up song with Joe singing "Galveston" He actually looked a little and sounded a lot like Glen Campbell back then. Needless to say, we did not pass the audition but had good experience. It did lead to a weekly radio show on WROS in Scottsboro, AL. Kurly Kilgore was a DJ there and just loved the band so he put us on every Monday night before sign off. When the days became short and we couldn't make it to Scottsboro to do the show live (it was an hour from where we lived), we would tape it in our living room with a 1 track reel to reel recorder and a single microphone. I have the tapes and will see if I can find a way to rip them to an audio file here. At least a few excerpts.

I was going to New Hope while most of my friends were still going to OXR (I snuck in and got away with it until it was past the time to send me back to OXR). The school bus would pick me up and take me to OXR, then pick up the high school students that were going on to New Hope. One of the neighbors who rode the bus to OXR then to NHHS was Denzie Martin, she was so beautiful and had a body that just drove me nuts. We talked on the bus a few times so the next year (my 9th grade year) I decided I wanted to go to New Hope.

There was a beautiful young girl with long hair named Joann Taymon at NHHS. I was in class with her sister Isabel. There was an old skating rink that had closed and someone opened it up as a dance hall. There was no alcohol sold, but they had a live band and it was packed with families who would enjoy the music and dance. I got to know Joann there and we become boyfriend and girlfriend. She got to know Joe by coming to our house and the next thing I know, she and Joe are going together and getting married (this was not long after we moved to TN). They lasted over 20 years together! She was for sure a knockout and the last photo I saw of her and her daughter, she still looks like she did then as does her grown daughter.

After Joann started dating Joe, I discovered a girl name Janie Day, I think she is the one that got me into tight jeans because hers were panted on! A lot of the girls then wore them like that though, but Janie just had a look in hers that did it for me. I wish I had gotten to know her better but we only had a few dates before my family moved to Milan, TN.

Moving to Tennessee - It was about this time that my dad took a job in Milan, TN and we relocated. Joe would come up and visit frequently but we definitely missed the band. We tried to connect with some players in the area, but it just wasn't the same. The school was a lot bigger than any school I had ever been in before. There were as many people in my class as there were in the entire High School at New Hope. I did make a few friends there, a piano play named Terry Graves who was so much like Elton John it was uncanny. This was before Elton John was really known, in fact, I think one of the first hits was just hitting the air waves at that time (Friends). He got me involved with the school play (Bye, Bye Birdie), which was being handled by the woman's PE teacher and the Band teacher. I couldn't read music, but he persuaded me to be in the drum corps of the band for the next year. I believe his name was Mr. Geiger (he wasn't there the next year, it was Mr. Evans but I was still in the band) and the PE teacher was Kay Tatum.

Mr. Geiger and Ms. Tatum were very cool. We would sit at the local diner after rehearsal drinking coffee, eating fried honey buns and talking till midnight or later. My first class of the day was Algebra but the teacher would let me skip the class as long as I took the tests and made a B or better (I made A's). I had a small part in the play as a reporter and then played bass guitar in the play's band. In looking back, I seemed to have had 2 sets of friends... some from the church and music and others just from school.

The summer was nice spending it with some friends I had met, Margie and Mary Duerkes (twins and I had the hots for them!!). Their mother was a looker too and probably why I became attracted to women's rear ends. All the girls in their family had butts to die for! Her mother was more of a friend than a mother and I spent many hours at their house. One of their brothers was a little nutty. He worked for a laundry cleaners and they did delivery/pickup. I went with him a few times and once he jumped a high rise railroad track in the VW delivery van. I don't know how it didn't damage the front end, but it did bust the radiator. Years later one of the girls visited me and my family in Alabama although I can't remember if it was Mary or Margie. She had moved to Memphis and that was the last I heard of/from her.

I spent the summer at the local swimming pool, almost daily. I was also doing music with the Baptist Church. Ginger Doyle and Donna Jewel were my other family and became best friends with me. We spent one summer raising money for a trip to Dallas, Texas for Expo 72. What a blast that was! I remember spending many weekends cutting grass and doing yard work to raise money. I had a very dark tan that year! That was also the year the movie "Love Story" came out and I remember watching it with Ginger at Mr. Gieger's house with him and his wife (he was the band teacher). I really thought Ginger and Donna were knockouts, in fact, there were a lot of beautiful girls in Milan. Must have been something in the water <hehehe>.

Donna and her dad had been doing music and he had a recording studio or access to one in Jackson so she and I recorded a duet of the old song "All I Have to Do is Dream". I loved to hear her sing, she had a very unique sound (although Helen Reddy sounded similar) and I am surprised she never made it big time. I did track her down back in the 90's and she had moved to California, married and was doing music with her husband. Not long after hearing from her, she moved to Montana and I lost contact with her again. Ginger moved north to Alaska and I'm told visits Donna every year or so but I never heard from Ginger since a few years after my family moved back to Alabama.

When school started back in the fall of 72, I was in the band and became friends with and dated a wonderful girl named Kim Mayo. She was a majorette and was a beautiful thin blonde bombshell! Her mother Carolyn was also a knockout so I am sure Kim grew up to be even moreso. I had never really had a serious relationship outside of friends and looking back, I wasn't a very good boyfriend... not that I was bad to her, but I was just not the totally considerate put the girl first type person that I am now. After I moved back to Alabama, I touched base with her for a while and learned she went to Murray State (where I had planned to go before the move back to Alabama) and majored in broadcasting. I had planned to do the same but upon my return to Alabama, got a job as a DJ and things progressed differently (the roads we take make all the difference in where we end up ). In the late 80's I did track her down and talked with her. She was living in Knoxville, TN and working for a radio station there. She was also dating someone from Huntsville and visited there often. I never worked out a chance to see her again and since lot contact with her. I often wonder how my life would have turned out had we continued our relationship. Being honest with myself I realized all too late that I was in love with her... She was my first love.

Back to Alabama

We moved back to Alabama before the school year ended. It was sudden, my dad came in on Friday and we were on the road Sunday. We didn't even have a place to stay in Alabama but if I recall, Joe found an old 4 room shack for rent that was really, really cheap. This was in the winter, like January of 73. We unloaded into this little house and was stuffed in it like sardines. We knew it was only a temporary thing but man was it crowded. Not only that, heating was by fireplace only so I learned to chop wood in the snow. There was no indoor plumbing so baths were in a large washtub in the kitchen. We did have water coming into the kitchen but there was no bathroom or shower/tub. We were there for about 6 weeks or so before moving into a real house. My dad had gotten a job teaching at a junior college and later started his printing company.

Getting settled in to school back at New Hope I was able to get into the band. I could not read music, but Mr. Maupin recognized my ability to learn and play by ear. I played the bass drum the first year for marching band then became section leader and played the timbales. For concert band, I played the electric string bass. We were the first in the stat to do so and got all 1s in competition. I remember getting a tour of the music department at the University of Alabama and the synthesizer they had. It took up a very large room with all these patch cords and knobs. Have things changed since then!

Before we had moved to Tennessee, I had the hots for a girl named Frankie Kelly. I had never talked to her or anything, but had a major crush on her. She was the drum major for the marching band and first chair clarinet for the concert band. We started dating and I became like a family member with her family. I spent more time at her house with her family than I did anywhere. Her parents (Joyce May and Frank) were like great friends to me, her little sister Susan and her brother Harold were best friends. Her brother Harold were the only males (and the first) to take accounting and business at the tech center (off campus classes for all the high schools to take classes that were not large enough for each individual county school). He was also class president our senior year while Frankie and I were voted "most talented". Frankie went off to college to study music and then to Europe to study even more.... we drifted apart. She continued her musical career and from what I'm told has been the conductor of several large symphony orchestras. She has recorded some cd's and has received great reviews. At last word, she is a professor of music at a university in Louisiana.

I had many friends from band but Frankie, Nancy Grooms and I were generally the closest. I also became good friends with Gary Mann who was on the football team (you couldn't be in band and on the football team). He and I played music together and along with Frankie and another guy named Don Neal Hornbuckle, formed a group called "Banana Wine". We got special permission from the board of education to tour the other schools and perform concerts a few times during the year. Gary and I spent a lot of time with Jan Barnard, she was also a majorette and in the band and an extremely beautiful woman. Gary, Martha Hill and I drove to Tuscaloosa to get her a pizza for her birthday. As we drove back in my little Pinto at 3:00 AM, we had been looking for a gas station since Birmingham... none open. We ran out of gas... as luck would have it, we ran out of gas right in front of Keller's Shell and Jan's house (her parents owned Keller's Shell). We woke them up, gave her her pizza at 3:00 AM and her dad opened up the store to get us some gas. This may have been before Frankie and I started dating, I can't remember for sure. Looking back I realize I was fortunate to have a lot of friends. A nice group of us spent a lot of time together and sure bring back a lot of good memories!

As we got a little older, our family band (The Silver Stars) landed a job playing a Sunday afternoon happy hour job at a night club in Huntsville, AL. At that time, you could be in a club with your parent if you were under age. We also started playing on Monday nights at another club in town that was owned by the same person. That only lasted a few months or so before it became too much for us to do and still be in school. But it did open up doors for me and music later in life.

Senior Year & My First Radio Job - During the summer between my Junior and Senior year, I started working at WGSV in Guntersville, AL. I got special permission from the board of education to attend the high school football games without having to travel on the band bus so I would leave my radio station job and drive to the school we were playing. Frankie and I were dating in our senior year and we went to the senior prom together and even had matching suite and dress. My coat was made out of the same material as part of her dress, it was so classy for the time! Frankie is still in music and is a professor, Gary was last heard from in Salt Lake City, UT. I lost contact with Nancy and Don Neal, I ran into Jan at a restaurant back in the 90's and have talked with her parents a time or two by making a stop at their store. Her sister was a cheerleader or majorette for the University of Alabama, her brother played football there and she was in the music department when she went there. Martha Hill and her family (we also did music at their house a lot and I spent a lot of time there) I lost contact with as well. I plan to attend the next class reunion and have also joined the websites for finding classmates.

Another girl that I had the hots for when I was in school was Rhonda Mattick. I did track her down recently (2006) and she still looks the same... young and hot! She is in the Bay area (or near there) of California and I hope to visit her in the near future. She was one of the girls I could have fallen for and probably would have had it not been for music and starting to date Frankie, but then, my mind back then was young and dumb. Not that my relationship with Frankie was dumb <LOL>, but hind site can always share more options than what you see at the time. The other 2 ladies that come to mind that I had major crushes on and spent a lot of time with was Sharon Etheridge and Vickie Whitaker. I remember several occasions when they would make me give them both back massages. They both also knew how to wear a pair of jeans! We also spent a lot of time at "Kathy's Kitchen", a little cafe there in New Hope. Listening to the juke box and a few B side songs while eating french fries with gravy. Kathy really liked me and I pretty much just made myself at home there.

So, I started college while working at WGSV. Frankie and I had drifted apart and I met a lady at college (older but a student) who I became friends with. Donna DePeitro who was Italian and lived close to the radio station. She would bring me Italian food (homemade) and I would visit her. She introduced me to a friend of hers from Towson, MD who was a total knockout. She was probably 10 years or so older than me but we sure enjoyed each other's company. As much as possible, she would come down to visit and see me. Several times a year for a year or so. Donna had 2 children and one of them wanted to learn to play the guitar. I gave him a guitar and a few lessons. Years later when he was married, his wife had a band and hired me to play in it (apx 1995). I had no idea it was his wife until he met me and remembered my giving him that guitar. From what I remember, he told me Donna had moved back to the Baltimore area. I would love to track them down now!