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I was born near Collingsworth in the Texas panhandle but my parents moved soon after to Downey, a bedroom community southeast of Los Angles. It was a crossroads of sorts, poised uneasily between Okie working class roots and the emerging Hollywood fantasy world. My dad was a stagehand and lighting dirctor who worked in that latter world and hobnobbed with the stars but he was a union man and a vet; hard man to impress.
It was fate then that the union sent him to work on the other fantasy world, Disneyland which opened in 1955. Downey was just a big farm being subdivied into 3 bedroom suburban boxes. I was born into that world . By the time I came along half the town worked on the Apollo space capsule being built at the Rockwell plant. Downey was better off than the towns around it, if yoiu struck out in any direction you were slumming it. If you headed down Florence Ave. you came to Watts, and at that time a white boy could still walk into a club and see Johnny Otis or Chico Rey or Ray Charles. I soaked up that music along with folk, surf, latin, even broadway stuff since my dad worked on the musicals. I learned that all music has something to offer.
Then came the hippie scene and although on the young side, I dove right in. I played electric guitar in a rock and roll band and thought I was the shit. I was half right. But I played. I played in every smoky, grimy pool hall in Southern California, got cheated by every two bit con artist posing as a club owner and ignored by thousands of drunken customers. And along the way something amazing happened. I got good!