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BiTS: That's wonderful. I love that. Tell me something else about the music that you were
listening to. You're not averse to a little bit of swing music, to say the least. You've got a couple
of albums and a number of tracks that are swing in various ways, and you just mentioned listening
to swing. What other stuff were you listening to?

DR: I always listen to blues and jazz from different eras. I collect 78s and currently I'm listening
to early jazz, swing bands and dance bands from the 1920s and 30s.

The earliest known photograph of Roomful of Blues, 1969: (left to right) Al Copley, BiTS: At what stage did
Fran Christina, Larry Peduzzi, Mike Robillard (appears by kind permission of Al you become involved
Copley, photo credit-Julie Speed)
with some of the bands
that you played with?

DR: Well, I started
Roomful of Blues the
year after I got out of
high school. While I was
in high school, I was
playing in local cover
bands, but playing
some blues and some
bluesy material that I

learned from British
bands like The Animals
and The Rolling Stones.
But my first
introduction to the
blues was from the flip
side of Chuck Berry's
‘School days’, I believe
it was. Either that or
‘Sweet Little Sixteen’. I think it was ‘School Days’. No, no, it was the flip side of ‘Maybellene’, ‘In
The Wee Wee Hours’, which was a slow blues, and I had never heard anything like it, but it
captivated me.

BiTS: I'm delighted to hear you say that. I'm a huge Chuck Berry fan and people don't seem to
reckon him as a blues player. I think he was a fabulous blues player.

DR: Oh, absolutely. I mean, he was busy inventing rock and roll, but it's just blues with a different
beat really, and a teenage theme. But boy, it was perfect to introduce me to the blues because it
was all the things that young people related to and then the flip sides were often blues tunes. So
it was a real schooling for me.

BiTS: Yes, absolutely fabulous. Tell me something about the setting up of the first band that you
played with. Did you find it difficult or easy?

DR: Well, I found it easy because that's all I wanted to do was play guitar. I was asked to join a
band, like an instrumental band. We were just three pieces to start – rhythm guitar, lead guitar
and drums, and we played all the popular instrumentals and also some kind of obscure ones of
the day. Rock and roll instrumentals and Duane Eddy songs and Link Wray. We played ‘Rumble’
and ‘Rawhide’, Link Wray’s popular tunes. Just all the instrumental music to start off and then I
started singing and after that and went from two or three different bands before I finished high
school. I probably was in like three bands, three or four bands.