1953 to 1959
Born 5 October 1953 in Louisville Kentucky. First guitar at age 5.
I remember as if it was last week the first time I knew I would be a guitar player. My Uncle Jack got a guitar for Christmas that year. He was only four years older than me. When Jack walked out on the porch to greet my family as we were coming over for Christmas eve he was playing his new guitar! WOW!! I was blown away. He was playing 'Jingle Bells'. I would walk over to my Grandmas house (where the guitar lived) and play it every day. My Uncle took a lesson or two and gave it up to play baseball. In 1958 my family moved from the apartment complex where we all lived across the river into Indiana. On the day we moved I went over to say good bye to Grandma and grab the guitar.
It was not much of a guitar. The name on the headstock reads: DYNAMIC. Press board top. Fret board painted black. Painted on pick guard. Super high action. But I could not put it down. I would spend hours a day picking out melodies. The very first thing I learned was 'Taps'. Then 'Revelry'. I would sit ten inches from the TV trying to imitate what the guitar players on television were doing. I became pretty good at picking out melodies by ear. My parents noticed my musical interests and signed me up for piano lessons at the private Catholic school I was attending. My teacher was a nun that only wanted to learn songs with the words 'holy' or 'waltz' in the titles. My Dad bought me a piano for $25. It was hard to play, sounded horrible, and was way far from being in tune. This made practice like torture. My Mother would have to stand over me and keep me at it. "You got three and a half more minutes to go. Keep practicing!" I remember her saying. The second I would finish I would go to the basement and learn the same material on the guitar. Four hours of practice a day on the guitar would fly by.
I still have my first guitar:
Joe's first guitar: 1958 Dynamic
Joe 1958