When I was real young , I'd go with my Pop on Sundays mornings down to his nightclub, 'the Riverside' to sweep the floor...do a little fishin' in back on the river and I'd play with the instruments left over from the night before on the band stand,,,,. banging on the drums, turning on the electric steel guitar and making' it sound like "cats in heat", on a Hot summer night... and I remember there was a old battered and dented metal guitar ( I now figure this was a pre- war National Duolain... ) and I'd strum across the strings and the 'sound' it would make ,,,would get the hair standing on my arms... a spooky feeling would always come over me ...strange that almost 50 years later... I'm making my living with one.....I started playing guitar when I was about 7 or so... I'd sling my guitar over my shoulder, walk across the road, through the graveyard and down the railroad tracks to a small one room shack on a swamp and take my lessons, but trying to learn 'she'll be coming around the mountain' and 'turkey in the straw' turned me off fast...... So after a few months of that crap, I started playing the drums and put the guitar away for awhile....I didn't have to learn any chords and I could sit down, so I was pretty happy !!!About 1966 or so, I was about 14 or 15 and running away from home, and doing a lot of surfing and playing in garage bands, and I ended up at the Newport Folk Festival ,where I met B.B. King !!! Who introduced me to the Legendary' King of the Delta Blues' Son House, who took me aside and told me to" be a good boy , go to church and read the Bible...", all the while Lighten' Hopkins was looking on and laughing at me!!! I was both scared and thrilled, and started playing the guitar again, this time using only open tunings and a slide ( I still don't have a clue when it comes to standard tuning) and learning from the old records of Skip James, Charlie Patton, Bukka White and Son House among others.... and developed , I guess, a style of my own....... J Dustin Sommers's Profile
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