{"id":2550,"date":"2022-06-18T17:46:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T17:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2550"},"modified":"2022-06-18T17:49:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T17:49:19","slug":"ftv-finding-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2550","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Finding Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who doesn\u2019t like stories about people being inspired to do great things?\u00a0 We all have moments in our lives when something adjusts our path in one direction or another.\u00a0 Not all are life changing moments like Jake and Elwood (The Blues Brothers) bathed in a ray of heavenly light watching Brother James Brown bring the congregation to a higher level (\u201cThe band,\u201d Jake exclaims, \u201cWe\u2019ll get the band back together!\u201d).\u00a0 Looking back, we can all see times where people were inspired to do . . .\u00a0 something.\u00a0 With <\/span>Blues Music Magazine <\/span><\/i>Editor in Chief Art Tipaldi\u2019s permission (okay, I didn\u2019t ask him but as a subscriber, I am pretty sure he won\u2019t mind), I would like to share the entry from his <\/span>Riffs & Grooves <\/span><\/i>feature (Issue 323) of that publication.\u00a0 I hope you will also find them as inspiring as I did:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHere\u2019s one more Christone \u2018Kingfish\u2019 Ingram story (<\/span>My note – he is carrying over a thread he started in the previous issue<\/span><\/i>). \u00a0 After lighting up the stages on the 2022 Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Kingfish began an East Coast tour.\u00a0 On February 11, 2022, he played to a capacity crowd at the Infinity Music Hall in Hartford.\u00a0 When I sat with him before the show, I told him of the only child in the audience, eight-year-old Greyson Charles.\u00a0 Seems Greyson has been playing guitar for two years and guess who his #1 guitar idol is.\u00a0 Kingfish took the time to sign a set list to Greyson with a personal message of encouragement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the show ended with Kingfish blowing the roof off on his <\/span>Hey Joe<\/span><\/i> finale, he put his guitar down, held up a guitar pick, and asked, \u2018Where\u2019s Greyson?\u2019\u00a0 Those fans around Greyson stood and pointed to him as Kingfish held up the pick and said, \u2018Come up here, I got this for you.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With the stage set high at about ten feet, his father had to pick Greyson up at the waist to hoist him to meet Kingfish.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say, there wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the house.\u00a0 I can see years from now some journalist will be interviewing Greyson, and he\u2019ll say, \u2018Getting a guitar pick from Kingfish encouraged me to follow this musical path.\u2019\u00a0 Not at all unlike a young teen Kingfish receiving Buddy Guy\u2019s or B.B.King\u2019s encouragement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Here are a few stories from the road.\u00a0 Michael \u2018Mudcat\u2019 Ward, bass player and original member of Sugar Ray and the Bluetones and Ronnie Earl\u2019s Broadcasters, told me of growing up in Maine as a 14-year-old blues piano player.\u00a0 His vision was that he was going to play the blues piano for life.\u00a0 In the late 1960s, he went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and set out to find four other blues obsessed students to form a blues band.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the young musicians got together, \u2018Mudcat\u2019 watched a young piano player out play everyone else.\u00a0 The piano player told \u2018Mudcat\u2019 that if he wanted to be in the band, he should take his keyboard home on Thanksgiving break and trade it for a bass.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how and when \u2018Mudcat\u2019 became the go-to bassist for nearly every Boston area blues band.\u00a0 And the piano player who took his seat?\u00a0 Benjamin Montgomery Tench III, aka Benmont Tench, who a few years later quit Tulane (University) to join Tom Petty\u2019s Mudcrutch, which later morphed into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another Boston area musician who was with \u2018Mudcat\u2019 as an original member of the Bluetones and Broadcasters is Anthony Geraci.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget the silence when he told a table about telling his mother, outta the blue, as a four-year-old, \u2018I need a piano.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0[Geraci] \u2018My parents are the most unmusical people you can imagine.\u00a0 I grew up in a house with no record player, no instruments, the only music I ever heard was driving around in the car or church music.\u00a0 When I was about four, my grandmother bought me a cheap, plastic Emenee organ.\u00a0 I started picking out the notes of songs I heard in church.\u00a0 So I did ask my mother for a piano instead of a baseball glove or Schwinn bike.\u00a0 Luckily, they heard me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They got me an old $25 junk upright piano.\u00a0 They threw it in the basement next to my mother\u2019s ironing machine.\u00a0 My mother would sit behind it, smoking a Pall Mall, and ironing everything, socks, underwear, whatever came outta the washing machine.\u00a0 The piano was right next to it, so I would play every day after school.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They finally got me lessons when I was about six.\u00a0 After about a year, the teacher said, \u2018Maybe you\u00a0 should get this kid a real piano.\u2019\u00a0 So unbeknownst to me, my mother went out to a local piano store and bought me a really small Baby Grand.\u00a0 She paid $4 a week on it.\u00a0 To me it was the most beautiful thing I\u2019d ever seen in my life.\u00a0 I polished that thing every day, and I\u2019d play it from the second I got home from school.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Interestingly enough, I find the use of the words \u2018inspiration\u2019 and \u2018encouragement\u2019 to be two of the strongest words in the English language.\u00a0 Looking back, I can find so many instances where both of these words steered me toward where I find myself today.\u00a0 Some were musical moments and some were of the \u2018just plain everyday life\u2019 moments.\u00a0 That I ended up spending 43 years as a Geography\/Earth Science teacher, for example, came from a series of events, two of which I blame on my brother, Ron, and one from my sixth grade elementary teacher, Mr. Aronson.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Brother Ron was always interested in science.\u00a0 He spent countless hours tinkering with scale models, his junior chemistry set, his own microscope, and pretty much anything that required a motor (electric or otherwise powered by some form of fuel).\u00a0 Some of my interest came from watching him toil on these projects, but I did not have the patience to watch glue dry.\u00a0 Most of my early interest in science came from that series of paperback <\/span>Little Golden Books<\/span><\/i> covering everything from astronomy to weather to geology.\u00a0 I spent hours pouring over them and when I had gone through them all, I would go back to the first volume and do it again.\u00a0 When the first U.S. satellites were launched, Ron would know when to go out and look for them passing by.\u00a0 Our whole family assembled on the street in front of our house to observe the large metal balloon called Echo 1 cross the sky from west to east.\u00a0 Ron got me interested in astronomy, space travel, model building, and model rocketry just as the American space program and NASA began the program that would send men to the Moon.\u00a0 If there was a space launch scheduled, I was in front of the TV glued to every word uttered by Walter Cronkite and his experts covering the mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Aronson\u2019s part in this was subtle.\u00a0 I can not even say it was a planned moment.\u00a0 We got the results of the standardized tests used to measure our educational advancement.\u00a0 I distinctly remember the look on his face when he dropped my answer booklet on my desk, pointed to the score and asked, \u201cAre you planning to be a science teacher?\u201d\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember whether my denial of any such plans was half-hearted or not, but I remembered this event seven years later.\u00a0 I stepped into my college advisor\u2019s office near the end of my freshman year and told him I wanted to get into the Geography \/ Earth Science teacher prep program.\u00a0 He looked me over and pointed across the hall saying, \u201cThen you better go talk to Professor Mahowski.\u00a0 He advises all the teacher prep students.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My new advisor looked me over and said, \u201cYou know, you should have made this decision last year, it would have been much easier.\u201d\u00a0 I replied, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t, so what do I need to do?\u201d\u00a0 He simply said, \u201cOkay, and we proceeded to write out a list of classes I would need over the next three years.\u201d\u00a0 Going into my senior year, he was totally amazed that I had been able to get every class on the list and was poised to graduate on time:\u00a0 \u201cThis has never happened before.\u00a0 How on earth did you get every class on that list with no substitutions?\u201d \u00a0 I offered, \u201cGood advising?\u201d which got a raised eyebrow and a hearty laugh.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Years later, I saw a feature on WLUC-TV news discussing how my old sixth grade teacher was still volunteering at an elementary school in his home town of Escanaba.\u00a0 Mr. Aronson was retired and well into his seventies but still in the game, so I wrote him a card.\u00a0 I gave him the short version of what I was doing and blamed him good naturedly for planting the \u2018science teacher seed\u2019 in my brain back in 1965.\u00a0 Only he knows for sure if his brief word of encouragement was a spontaneous comment or a planned moment, but either way, it obviously laid dormant in the back of my mind until I decided to follow that particular career path.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My interest in music came from several places.\u00a0 Unlike Anthony Geraci, our house always had a record player \/ radio playing.\u00a0 My mother would always be singing along to something as she baked and did household chores.\u00a0 My dad liked to play tunes on his harmonica.\u00a0 I do not remember whose idea it was to overturn the metal waste basket from our kitchen closet for me to beat on, but my earliest interest in drumming began with me thumping along with dad\u2019s polka tunes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The drumming part kind of sat in the background when my sister decided she was not going to learn to play the piano.\u00a0 The lessons she was taking from our up the street neighbor (paid for by my father building them a rec-room fireplace) were handed down to me.\u00a0 In spite of my mother\u2019s encouragement, my enthusiasm for practicing the piano soon fell off.\u00a0 I could plunk my way through a piano piece but found I could play it back from memory after one or two tries.\u00a0 As a result, my music reading skills got left at a very rudimentary level.\u00a0 My mom never suspected I was playing from memory when she would ask for a particular song.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In fourth grade, we signed up for the musical aptitude test used to decide which band instrument we might want to learn.\u00a0 I scored well on time signatures, note recognition, and when I hit the last question (\u201cWhat instrument would you like to learn how to play?\u201d), I wrote down \u2018drums\u2019.\u00a0 The folks supported my new direction by getting me a plastic red sparkle snare drum for Christmas.\u00a0 Once they were convinced I was more serious about practicing my drum lessons in fifth grade, the piano was sold.\u00a0 I watched every drummer I could find on TV from <\/span>The Lawrence Welk Show<\/span><\/i> to the numerous bands featured on <\/span>The Ed Sullivan Show<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 I do not remember their immediate reaction when I announced, \u201cI want to learn to play a drum set,\u201d but mom and dad surely could not escape the fact that I spent sixth and seventh grade obsessing over every drum catalog I could lay my hands on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were two, and at times three, music stores in Marquette in the mid-1960s.\u00a0 We visited them all several times and dad usually talked business while I gawked at the drum kits on display.\u00a0 About the time I thought it would ever happen, dad showed up home a couple of hours early from work and said, \u201cCome on, we are going to buy your drums.\u201d\u00a0 Borhner Music on Front Street had a silver sparkle Ludwig set just like the one Ringo played (okay, his had a black oyster shell finish) and dad had stopped in one day to arrange the deal.\u00a0 With me in tow, the salesman showed us the whole package and said, \u201cI tell you what, Eddie, if you pay for it in full, I will send my guy over to set it up and give your boy one free drum lesson!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I may not have been a trained economist, but even in seventh grade, I realized my State Police detective father wasn\u2019t pulling in a big salary.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t lacking for a roof over our head or food on the table, but we did a lot of things to stretch out the family budget.\u00a0 Surviving the Great Depression made my folks very good at doing a lot of things to make ends meet.\u00a0 We always had a garden and dad had learned the arts of tinkering with motors, carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and basic electrical work.\u00a0 We did a lot of D.I.Y. projects at home and camp.\u00a0 We always had a fire place so when we were done putting in enough wood for our needs, dad would sell his surplus at ten dollars a pickup load.\u00a0 If one has purchased a cord of wood more recently, one can do the math.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Ludwig drum set they fronted me the money for clocked in at around $500.\u00a0 I say, \u2018Fronted me the money for,\u201d because I was compelled to help pay for it by pushing a lot of firewood.\u00a0 Today, just the drums alone (minus the stands and cymbals) can cost over two grand.\u00a0 In fact, the John Bonham series snare drum they sell now costs as much as my whole set did back then.\u00a0 I know I had the desire to learn to play but their show of faith in me doing so turned up the heat.\u00a0 Unlike my piano lessons, I turned my \u2018one free lesson\u2019 into a daily obsession.\u00a0 I made enough noise to have them suggest that I should perhaps move my drums to the basement instead of practicing in my bedroom.\u00a0 The drums arrived in April and near the end of May, I got surprise number two.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mom and dad had watched me trying to play along with records on my sister\u2019s little hardshell case turntable.\u00a0 The volume was so feeble, I would listen to the song and then play through it while humming along (my musical memory came in handy here).\u00a0 We had an old radio\/turntable dating back to the seven years dad was at the L\u2019Anse State Police post, but it was showing its age.\u00a0 To put it into perspective, it was purchased before I was born in 1953 and the \u2018new\u2019 US 41 route was just being cleared up the hill south of Bovine (the suburb of L\u2019Anse near the golf course).\u00a0 This plays into the story because dad and a friend had an emergency landing on the two rut trail between the stumps on the \u2018new\u2019 road when their engine failed after taking off the airstrip that was located south of L\u2019Anse.\u00a0 The pilot had offered to fly to Houghton to pick up this radio\/turntable when it had arrived.\u00a0 In the end, dad decided driving to pick it up wasn\u2019t such a bad idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Near the end of May, I had a whole month of learning to play my new set under me when I got home from school to find the folks had bit the bullet and had purchased a new solid state (as in, no more vacuum tubes to warm up when switched on) Magnavox stereo that now occupied the corner of the living room where the old 1950 unit had stood.\u00a0 Mom had a record playing and had one more surprise waiting.\u00a0 She pointed me downstairs and showed me the extension speaker for the stereo playing away on the shelf behind my drums.\u00a0 A dial on the unit upstairs could be set to play only the main speakers, the extension speakers, or both at the same time.\u00a0 The turn table spindle could be set up with multiple disks so I could stack them up, hit play, and then trundle downstairs to play my heart out (at the proper volume) until the stack ran out.\u00a0 This unit was pretty well worn out when the folks finally sold their home circa 2012, but I made sure I got the extension speaker when we cleaned out the house before it was sold.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Have you been encouraged and inspired by others in your life?\u00a0 I am betting you have.\u00a0 It took me nearly fifty years to finally write a thank you note to Mr. Aronson, but I am pretty sure remembering those who helped us along the way also makes a fitting tribute.\u00a0 Encouraging and inspiring others ourselves is another way to honor the legacy of those who did the same for us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Kingfish doing his B.B.King thing in 2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Who doesn\u2019t like stories about people being inspired to do great things?\u00a0 We all have moments in our lives when something adjusts our path in one direction or another.\u00a0 Not all are life changing moments like Jake and Elwood (The Blues Brothers) bathed in a ray of heavenly light watching Brother James Brown bring the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2553,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions\/2553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}