Hometown Jams: Home

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Upside of R&R Home

The Music Bug

   In my early years, my musical experience had been at church mostly, although, my Uncle Bill Allsup use to play guitar and sing country ballads. Later, he even taught me a couple of tunes. My Aunt Doris (House) Allsup was from a family of 14 kids. All of whom were very musically talented. At age 7 or 8 I would hear her and my Uncle Glen Allsup sing at my Grandma's house. Really good singing. She did a local TV show once called "The Black Jack Wayne Show" and I saw her on there looking beautiful and sounding great. It stuck with me. To this day I respect her musical talent. In great part, she introduced me to the joy of performing music.

    Still, I was a kid and would rather be digging "forts," as we called them, instead of singing. That was something you did at church. Fort digging fools, we were. Underground tunnels, don't ya know! Dig out a little hole in the side of our fort and we had a candle holder. I can still remember the smell of those candles in those forts and the partially singed roots of a tree that we inevitably ran into when we would be digging with our little army shovel that Dad got from the Army/Navy surplus store. You know. The kind that fold down and go into a back pack. An excellent kid's digging tool. Excellent. So I was busy with hideouts and forts. Major stuff to a kid.

    During this period I spent many a summer night sleeping outside on a chaise lounge. I would listen to radio on the newest piece of high tech audio gear on the market. Mom had bought me a transistor radio! I would listen to K-FIV radio way into the night until the sign off song of "Dream" was played at about 11 or 12 midnight. No 24 hour anything in Modesto at that time. You hear old timers talk about how radio made you use your imagination more than television does. To some degree, that was still true even in those "second generation" years of radio. Especially when listening to a radio with a teeny weeny speaker all by yourself under the covers. I heard stories of the Lone Ranger and Inner Sanctum on radio from my brother in about 1952 or 53, but this was rock n roll. This was ROCK N ROLL!

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