My Musical Journey turned into an ODYSSEY

My Musical Journey

     From very early I've been very fortunate in seeing and hearing some of the most exciting musicians in the last century.        My mother took me to see Yma Sumac in 1950, at age 5.  She was the later 1940's version of Jimi Hendrix.  I still love her "Voice of the Xtabay"  album.      
     Growing up in West Virginia, I was exposed to a lot of Hillbilly music,  Rockabilly, and Rock and Roll at a very early age.  Roaming around downtown  South Charleston, WVa on my bike at age 9 in the summer of 1954, I came upon  an outdoor concert that's now the stuff of legends.  I got to see Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps, Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Little Richard, Big Bopper, Richie Valens, The Platters, Eddie Cochran,  and I've forgotten who else.  I also went to see Elvis Pressley that summer.  Saw  James Brown a few years later, maybe as many as a dozen times.    
     Around 1959, saw both Duane Eddy and Bo Diddley, and decided I had to get a Gretsch electric guitar, which brand they both played.  Devoted myself to figuring out how to play the damn thing, for years and years.  By 1961, was in a band at Kentucky Military Institute, and all of a sudden I was dedicated to the Blues:  Jimmie Reed, John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Champion Jack Dupree, Little Walter, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, Isley Brothers to name a few.  For a while, I tried my hand at folksinging, too, enamoured with Joan Baez, Ian and Sylvia, Hoyt Axton, Koerner, Ray and Glover, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Bob Dylan, got to see them perform, and a lot of others, "the Mugwumps"- forerunner to both Mammas and Pappas and Lovin' Spoonful, Saw Young Rascals, Beau Brummels, Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, Animals, Byrds, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Ike and Tina Turner, Zombies, Them, The Pretty Things.      In 1965, while going to a little college in Georgia, went to a show with the most incredible R & B lineup imaginable:  For $1.25,  I saw Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Gene Chandler, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Chuck Jackson, and James Brown.  I was flabbergasted! 

     After a couple years military service in Okinawa, in the summer of 1967, I went straight to the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, and then the real musical experiences started.  I don't think anyone can imagine the wealth and magnitude of musical talent that infused that little city in those times.  For someone like me, it was heaven on earth! First week after I got there, walked across the street from my house into the Panhandle Park to hear "The Jimi Hendrix Experience".  Lived next door to Janis Joplin (met her, but didn't know her), but saw her play every week at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park with Big Brother and the Holding Company.  There were so many bands, and every single one of them far better than any so-called Rock & Roll I've heard for at least 20 years:  I went to either the Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore Auditorium, the Straight Theater, the Matrix, the Coffee Gallery, The Carosel Ballroom, the Longshoreman's Hall, one venue or another every single night for a few years until they closed down:  Country Joe and the Fish, John Mayall, Jeff Beck Group, Steppenwolf, Indian Head Band, Ace of Cups, Pentangle, Moby Grape, Grateful Dead, AB Skye Blues Band, Sly and the Family Stone, The Chambers Brothers, Kaleidoscope, Salvation Army Banned, All Man Joy, Albert & BB King, Lamb, Ten Years After, Original Fleetwood Mack (with Peter Green, Danny Kirwan & Jeremy Spence), Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, The Mothers of Invention, Lothar and the Hand People, It's a Beautiful Day, The Fugs, JJ Cale, Charlatans, Quicksilver Messinger Service, Cleveland Wrecking Company,  even Flatt and Scruggs.  Then there was Spirit, Mount Rushmore, Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, again, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Charley Musselwhite's South Side Sound System, Siegal Schwall Blues Band,  Flaming Groovies, Loose Gravel, Johnny Sunshine's Pipe Joint Compound, Big Mamma Thornton, Santana, and there's absolutely no way to name all the bands I saw, so I'll just say here that there were a lot more, and all of them exceptional!  

     So, then, about 1971, the Jamaicans got to town.  One night, walking along Broadway Street in North Beach, I heard a beat coming out of the Stone (or Keystone) at the corner of Montgomery Street, and, like Wimpy (of Popeye fame), snagged by the nose with the whiff of burgers or something, helplessly and uncontrollably started dancing right there on the sidewalk, and kept at it for 2-3 hours.  I learned later that it was the SF debut of a band called Bob Marley and the Wailers.  Reggae was instantly my favorite form of Rock & Roll!  For 20 years following that night, I'd be skankin' all the way to Zion.  I was convinced that this was GOD's music (still am, actually) and set about trying to fill my heart and soul with the best Jamaica had to offer:  The Third World, The Twinkle Brothers, Burning Spear, The Wailers, The Upsetters, Big Youth, Soul Syndicate, The Mighty Diamonds, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Killer Miller &the Inner Circle, IJAHMAN, the Pioneers, Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse, and so many more.       
     I'd like to say that up until this point, I'd never heard any Classical music that could hold my attention.  I mean, it was obvious that composers such as Wulfgang Mozart, Ludvig von Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Frideric Handel, and such created works of genius, but I just couldn't get behind it!  Classical music had too much stuff like Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and and endless supply of composers that bored me to tears! 

     Funny how things happen.  Around 1989, popular music hit rock bottom.  Someone got the bright idea to take vulgar, threatning, posturing, woman-hating, pretentious, violent, pathetic excuse for poetry, and set it to music stolen from bands from the past, and had the gall to proclaim it to be a new form of Rock & Roll, neglecting the fact that when there were vocals included in Rock & Roll, they involved singing.  Anyway, I've often hoped thay'd confine it to it's very own radio station: KRAP.  However, in an odd, funny way, I am grateful to them.  At the time, I was driving airport shuttles, taking up to 7 people at a time to SFO airport, as I was doing one night shortly after the '89 earthquake, listening to my favorite blues, rock, and reggae station on the radio, when all of a sudden, regaled with the most vile, ugly, sexist crud I'd ever heard, and nearly had an accident on the freeway, trying frantically to find a station of quality that I could trust not to repeat that offense.  Finally, for the sake of safety, I put it on the Classical station, feeling safe that they, at least wouldn't betray me.

     And then, something very strange happened.  Not only was I hearing music that actually got me high, but I was hearing stuff that provoked the most drastic 180 degree turn-around I've ever experienced.  Who WAS this Luigi Boccherini?  This Georg Philip Telemann? This Antonio Vivaldi?  Giuseppe Tartini?  Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach?  Pietro Locatelli?  Mauro Giuliani?  Ferdnando Carulli?  Johann Christian Bach?

     After a few shifts driving shuttle with this music on, I was no longer choosing choice records from my most extensive Reggae and  Blues collections when I'd get home, but stopping at music stores looking for CDs of these composers' music.  I had never believed I'd ever be able to STAND classical music, and here I was fanatically scouring the racks for 18th century chamber music, to the exclusion of everything else I've ever loved to play or listen to!  Certainly a 'back-door' approach, but hell, whatever works!

     That was 17 or 18 years ago, and I still can't get enough.  I finally realized that I hadn't ever heard the really compelling stuff.  Well, I have now, and let me tell you, I'll never again settle for less.