Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

music and, with the die cast, I was now allowed to dream again. These wouldn’t be the lost dreams of my childhood or my father, so softened and repeatedly rejected by the steel hymen of middle and upper class presumptions. My dreams had real possibilities in an America that appeared to be burning the furniture to feed the fireplace.
    What could be of more noble sacrifice, more spiritually rewarding, more unselfish and yet, so esoteric in nature than the role of a teacher? At the all-white Warren High School, made up of working and middle-class students, it seemed we were blessed with more than our share of dedicated servant instructors. My choices of art and music had magically tapped into the best. Try as they would and as patient as they were, my other teachers could not crack my shell of indifference. They finally had to move on to morereceptive students. But my music teacher, Del Towers, grabbed my attention, held it, and nurtured it long enough to allow me to grow into the only thing that proved to hold my undying love for the rest of my life. I already liked music. I was drawn to it. But Del taught me how to make my own. He showed me how to read and write music. He showed me how to perform it with confidence. And every time I did his bidding he rewarded me by raising the bar a little higher, and then gave me the tools to reach each goal. It wasn’t just me. Every student in his class received the same sincere attention. It was only a question of their desire.
    Music is such a natural and significant part of the American character, flowing so effortlessly, commercially, and aesthetically through inbred class differences that its impact defines who we are to the rest of the world. It is loud and quiet, and beautiful and ugly and powerful. But never,
never
, weak. Unless, of course, you want to buy it that way. Music becomes political in that it rises up as an ambassador for the culture of Western freedom. Freedom, in my musical experience, is a human right that one might die for only to have his brother or sister repaid for such belief and sacrifice by the shady dealings, greed, and unscrupulous ill will of freedom’s legally endorsed “free” practitioners. Could be your neighbor. I don’t know.
    But, beyond the politic, the hucksters, hustlers, and dealers who peddle music, there remains at the bottom of the boiling pot, the unparalled imagination and energy of America’s musical artists. Even after the opportunism, exploitation, and manipulation by the captains of the music industry, the artists’ sound and music, the truth and beauty of the individual, still remain to be enjoyed. If it is indeed tragic, then the line of masochistic artists waiting and hoping to be abused and exploited is only marginally smaller than the line of sadistic handlers willing to show them the way. But that exciting world of opportunity was still out of reach for me. For the moment, I had to sharpen what tools I had because there wasn’t a chance in hell of my going to college.
    My embryonic musical influences included the painfully brilliant Hank Williams, whose songs my mother sang around the house, but strangely, only when she was either depressed or extremely happy. She also brought me songs she had written, and had me read the simple lyrics of her wishes. And then there were the songs my father so treasured. The big band swing, the dangerous boogie woogie, and the sterile crooner ballads. Even my dear beloved older sister Nina took me on a tour of music as she aimed to become a beatnik. She bought a guitar and wore a beret and took journalism in school until the verbose lingo and limited political reach of folk music gave way to the rebellious evolution and wordless beauty of revolutionary jazz as the music of choice for all true beatniks. I, too, fell into to my music of choice: rhythm and blues.
    When summers came, time always moved more slowly, and I inevitably missed and pined for school, because I wasn’t yet old enough to work. Occasionally, I foundmyself in Tennessee with my mother’s parents. They had chosen to move back down South after her father retired from the job he held at the Burroughs Corporation, a company that, at the time, made wartime products. They had a farm near the bottom of Kentucky Lake and I whiled away the hot sticky days fishing, tending to chores, or being kicked by their mule. The long humid nights, lying next to an open window praying for the smallest breeze and being lulled into