Page 12 - BiTS_12_DECEMBER_2022_Neat

LL: Would you tell us about where you grew up and the family you grew up in please?

GG: I was born in Berkeley, California, but my parents moved to San Jose, California when I
was about 2. My Mom had a variety of jobs over the years, including working in clothing stores
and managing Asian furniture stores. She also dabbled in doing paintings on and off over the
years, and she was quite good at that. My stepfather had an electrical contracting company,
and my actual father managed
restaurants. My father had been a
drummer before World War II, and
my grandfather played four-string
banjo as a hobby. My grandmother
apparently played pretty good
ragtime piano when she was younger,
but she had stopped playing by the
time I came around. So there was a bit
of music running in the family. I have
a younger brother as well, who
dabbles a bit on the guitar.

LL: What kind of music/musical
artists where you exposed to while
growing up?

GG: I guess the usual Disney
children’s records when I was a little
kid. I loved the “Zorro” TV show when
I was really young, and I still have the
‘Theme from Zorro’ 45 that I got back
then, which I loved. It wasn’t the
official Disney version, which was a
more orchestral/vocal version, it was
the more acoustic guitar/vocal
version done by the Chordettes on
Cadence Records. I remember being fascinated by the strumming acoustic guitar on that
record, without really knowing what it was. I did later find some Sinatra and Nat King Cole 45s
that were my parent’s, so I must have heard those as well.

LL: How old were you when you started playing music? What drew you to the guitar?

GG: I was eleven when I got my first guitar, a Martin acoustic, which was under the Christmas
tree in 1964. Before that, some kids a couple years older than me had a surf band that used to
rehearse around the corner from my house. I loved hearing them play and looking at the cool
Fender Jaguar guitars. Then when The Beatles came out, that was it: I badgered my parents for
a guitar for months and months. I’m sure they thought I would outgrow it, but I kept bugging
them, and so under the tree that year was a guitar.

LL: When and what drew you towards jazz?

GG: I took lessons right away and studied out of Alfred’s Basic Guitar Book. So was reading
notes right away, which was good. I studied with that first teacher, Mrs. Allen, for a while and
was doing okay, but I really wanted to learn some rock tunes like the British Invasion stuff I
was hearing on the radio. My second teacher was Geoff Levin, who taught at a cool store called