JimmyR
Early Days
1955 - 1975
I was born in
Grove City, Pennsylvania on May 9, 1955. My Mom was Queen of the Prom and Dad
was a motorcycle hood. No kidding! Well, back in those days when you had an
"oops!" with a "nice girl" you did the right thing. So we
were a family. A year-and-a-half later my little brother Steve came along. I
guess Mom and Dad had the same saying as we have in my house today, "Two'll
do!" No more siblings came a-calling!
Mom and Dad were always into music. I wish I could say they turned me onto Muddy
Waters and all those guys like lots of rock stars lie about, but the truth is
they were more into the crooners like Frankie Avalon and stuff. Especially Mom.
I would bet that if "Tutti Frutti" was heard around our house it was
Pat Boone's version! I think Dad had a good voice, but he would never sing
seriously, just in-the-shower stuff. And if you ever caught him really singing,
he would then start vamping it and kidding around. He played a bit of harmonica,
too. I ruined a real good Hohner 64 Chromatic in the sand box. Mom didn't sing
much as I recall, but she always had the radio on and I half-remember tons of
melodies from those days.
My real musical awakening, like many of the kids my age, came when the Beatles
hit the Ed Sullivan show. It was a wave that swept over us and changed our
world. I don't care how many more records or CD's or MP3's anybody today sells
than the Beatles, it will never match those times. The reason is that we will
never be that innocent again. When you have kids that are snuffing their
teachers and class mates at age 13 and rapping about ho's before they've even
put their pre-pubescent peckers into a member of any sex, you will never have
another Beatles. Oasis? Nah. M&M? Forget it! It was a magical time. Of
course I wanted a guitar just like a million other kids.
I was left-handed, so I thought I would get one like Paul McCartney. But the guy
with the cigar at Trader's Music Store in Butler, PA steered my Mom away from
that. He said it would be harder for me finding equipment and blah blah, but he
probably just didn't have any in stock. So I went away with a three-quarter size
acoustic, since I was so small. Mom set me up to take lessons at the store from
this old man who played a piano in accompaniment and tried to teach me to read
music and play polkas. I wanted to learn the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, Stones,
Animals and all that cool stuff, but I hung in there until I learned the basic
chords and merited a three-quarter size electric Tosca, supposedly built for
Gretsch in Italy. I learned a lot, but finally quit taking lessons after I
learned barr chords. Besides, at that age it was easier playing Army with my
friend Gary Hilliard than practicing guitar.
I started to get kinda serious about the guitar again in the sixth grade and I
remember even playing with this other kid named Roger Stewart who had a Fender
Mustang (cool!) at school for what may have been a talent show. It was probably
a good thing that I picked it up again, because unbeknownst to me my world was
about to change in a BIG WAY and the guitar would become my saving grace.
The company that Dad worked for was opening up a Southern branch, like much of
American industry in the 60's so right after the sixth grade was over we moved
to Wynne, Arkansas a small town about 45 miles across the Mississippi River from
Memphis, Tennessee. To me, it might as well have been Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
There were people there who were still pissed off about the Civil War, and I got
beat up a lot. I had a real Yankee accent, was little and skinny and wore
glasses. Later when that movie Revenge of the Nerds came out, I was gonna
sue them 'cause I just knew they were basing the characters on my high school
days! One of the first kids I met there, the son of one of the local big wigs
told me, "You suck, you little shit!" I had never met with such hate,
and he didn't even know me. I think he later got raped in prison like one of
those frat boys outta Animal House...
The people that I fell in with were the nerds, punks, hippies, and outcasts. And
wouldn't ya know it, some of them were musicians. My best friend Joe Duncan who
lived two houses down got a guitar, but later switched to bass and we started to
dream those rock star dreams. We were the first people to smoke dope in town,
drop acid, do all that crazy stuff. We would talk about nothing but music,
listen to music, watch music on TV, and stay up all night listening to and
trying to figure out what our heroes were playing. I had a band with some other
guys first including a kid even younger than my little brother named Bill Dugan.
His mama would put up with us practicing in her living room. Later on, my
parents gave in and let us blast them out, too. I got into a band with some
older guys for a time, the Rogues, who have since gotten back together and are
still rocking over there in Arkansas. Go guys! I was considered "the
kid" and people thought I was pretty hot. Shows what a lack of local talent
there was back then!
I had good enough grades to skip my senior year and go to college, and I was
glad to get out. I did well in college until I started fucking off and playing
and partying too much. Looking back, I was stupid in that the time I spent in
college I could have at least finished with some kind of degree and been done
with it, but you know what they say about hindsight. I had a band in college
with Joe and some other guys called Wake. We played a bit and learned a lot, but
Joe opted for family life and got married. Wake also at one time included a guy
named Sonny Hunt, a legitimately bad-ass guitar player who still lives in
Jonesboro.
As the spring semester of 1976 drew to a close, I knew that I had to make
another change. I thought about shooting the moon and heading to LA, but I guess
I was too scared and opted to go to the nearest big city: Memphis, Tennessee. As
it turned out, the influences there and the history of the place were to play a
big part in shaping me as a musician, so the first part of June found me there,
staying at the home of some musicians I had met.
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