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TE: Yes, my parents always listened to music, mainly jazz music, big band music and Broadway
music from theatrical plays. Then I started hearing music on the radio. It would have been stuff
like Elvis Presley, and then I think I started noticing like surf music. Then the big event in America
and music life is watching The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 with my parents and my
sister.

BiTS: [Laughing] I'm laughing because

you're one of dozens of people that have
said that to me over the years.
TE: Millions of people, and so that lets

you know how old I am, and begging my
parents for a guitar. And then of course,
then you heard nothing but well, we
called it British invasion music. Nothing
but Rolling Stones and The Animals and
The Beatles. That's what led me to the
music of my own country because bands
like The Yardbirds and then later Cream,
of course, would put blues songs on their
albums and I love this music. That led me
to discovering blues and then going to
see B.B. King as a teenager and Howlin’
Wolf and Muddy Waters as well.

BiTS: Wow, I never got to see Wolf. I
wish I could have done. I saw the other
two, but never Wolf, unfortunately.

TE: Oh, he was great, and B.B. King was
such a gentleman. I went to see him at a

teen show. He was playing for a week at
a hotel in North Miami Beach near where
I grew up and they had to do a teen show
on, I think, maybe the Sunday afternoon
where they shut down the bar and
teenagers could come into the bar and
hear B.B., and he was so nice. He greeted
us all and talked to all the kids and I
thought that maybe that's what Howlin’
Wolf would be like, but when he came off
the stage and I walked over there to approach him, the closer I got, the scarier he looked. So I
didn't get to meet Howlin’ Wolf, but I wish I did, but he didn't look like he was in a very good mood.

BiTS: Somewhere or other I've got a pick that was given away by B.B. King at the end of his show.
He used to give away hundreds, thousands of picks, probably.

TE: Yeah, yeah. Very nice man.

BiTS: Tell me about how you became a professional musician.

TE: Well then I started playing, I did my first appearance in front of people playing in a school
talent show in 1968. I did a song by The Monkees and a song by The Beatles. I did ‘Eleanor Rigby’