Page 20 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
was a really great guitar player who traveled Europe for the military with a combo group.
Sometimes we would go to my grandfather’s brother’s house where the relatives would get together to perform. One of the cousins could sing pretty damn well and I started singing some of the old songs at a young age. It was just a family get-together and of course, we didn’t have a television or any other entertainment back then. We did have a radio, with two knobs and in those days we could get the Grand Ole Opry. It was never crystal clear, but we heard Hank Williams, Little Jimmy Dickens and many other great country performers.
But I was kind of on and off with music over the years until I got into high school and joined the band, playing the trumpet. It wasn’t that I didn’t like playing music, but I’m the type of person who doesn’t take to things that I’m not really good at doing. I was self-taught and by continuing to play I got better over time. During my time in the high school band, I played by ear despite having the sheet music. One day Jess Cummins, the band director, decided to march me in front of everyone while he went into a thirty-minute rage because I wasn’t learning to read music. He thought I was cheating and gave me a failing grade and while that might have crushed some people’s musical ambition, it only made me more determined because he made reference to the fact that people who don’t learn to read music ended up in beer joints playing for ten dollars a night. I will say that Cummins was a brilliant guy, but he just had a thing that someone not schooled in something had no business doing it.
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