As promised on the cover page:

THE BEGINNINGS

 

 

I began playing the guitar in Evansville Indiana. Teaching myself and learning folk music.

In the early fall of 1963, during football practice, I would often take my guitar to school and practice in the laundry room where I worked for the athletic department as a student manager (a glorified name for “water boy”). I tried out for football as a freshman but I was so small that the coach made me a student manager, and it paid my tuition at Rex Mundi Catholic High School. I was a junior by now.

 

I suppose the word had leaked out from the band (after listening to me play in the laundry room) that I played folk music.  When school started, the principal called me to the office (I thought my past indiscretions had finally caught up with me) but no, she asked me and my brother, Larry, to bring our guitars to school.  The local Evansville Press was running a story about folk music in the local high schools and was coming by to interview us.

 

The Press came to our school and my brother and I stood out in front of the building and sang a few songs while pictures were being taken.  Most of the students on that side of the building were hanging out of the windows and cheering for us after each song.  We were featured in the story and suddenly became very popular. 

 

We were asked to perform at some big dinner meeting in town.  Larry chickened out so I had to perform alone. It went ok, I guess, because I didn’t get any vegetables thrown at me.  The audience was very nice to me.  They hadn’t seen too many “live” folksingers in those days.

 

Shortly after that first exposure to an audience, my dad shipped us out to our hometown of Redfield South Dakota to live with our grandfather while he went back for Navy duty in Japan.

 

While attending RHS, I joined a folk group sponsored by the high school music department, The Royal Minstrels. I loved playing in the group much more than being a soloist.