Musician/Songwriter

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The Albert King-styled version of "Crosscut Saw" (there have been many including versions by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton) below is me recorded with my Cakewalk Music Creator 2003 software and using not a standard sized guitar for the solos but a Hondo mini electric guitar I bought for my daughter several years ago (recorded on the mini amp that came with it directly into the mike) and also using a damned good backing track I found online. I left it warts and all exactly as I did it sitting at my computer in the wee hours since if it were a live performance there'd be no cleaning up afterwards.

Entertaining people has been a large part of my life for many, many years. From my childhood days back in Louisiana where, from age eleven until I went into the marines at seventeen, I played gigs in many of the "chittlin' circuit" venues of the area. Sometimes, our engagements followed right on the heels of such great performers as B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Mr. Excitement", Jackie Wilson and "Mr. Dynamite", James Brown.

A lot of the clubs we played couldn't actually be characterized as anything extraordinary. As a matter of fact, most were anything but. However, my tender age coupled with the knowledge of who'd just performed there or who was coming made them all very special indeed to me. I played lead guitar and actually had the honor, the thrill if you will, of backing (at various times) several people who'd made their mark on the world of black music and the world at large.

The first instrument I owned was a clarinet, which I started playing in the school band at about age seven, but it wasn't until the day I saw a young man with an instrument who had the young ladies screaming and falling all over the place that I realized my true musical calling. His name, of course, was Elvis Presley but it could've been Rumpelstiltskin for all I cared. It was the effect he was having on all of those women that struck me like a bolt of lightning and it may have been more than his guitar playing that was doing it to those young ladies but I figured that was a good enough starting point for me.

My older brother got me a $49.95 Airline electric guitar (that was the brand sold by Montgomery Ward's back in those days) as a gift when I was eleven years old and I took to it like a seal to a fish dinner. It just felt so natural in my hands. I was playing in my first public outing about one month later. The audience of adults in the American Legion Hall, in the black section of my small home town that Sunday afternoon (I grew up in the era of segregation), loved it (I played "Hideaway" by blues legend, Freddie King) and, as the classic stories of entertainers first being bitten by the bug seem to always go, I loved their loving it.

After my time in the Marines, I returned to a civilian world that was vastly changed from the one I'd left a scant four years before. Hair was long (on both sexes), love (sex) was "free", and the music of the era was as sizzling as could be. Groups like Sly & the Family Stone, Tower of Power, Kool & the Gang along with the already solidly established artists such as The Temptations, and, of course, the aforementioned "Godfather of Soul", James Brown kept the funk groove going hot and heavy. Meanwhile, groups like The Whispers and The Ballads, along with ever-popular solo artists such as Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green kept the romantic fires burning.

It didn't take much to lure me back into the life I'd known since my childhood days. Shortly after getting my discharge from the Marine Corps, I enrolled in De Anza, a college in Cupertino, California (where I'd settled) and I also met some guys in a club band and in seemingly no time at all, I was playing all around the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1994, I completed the writing of two songs, which I still feel are relevant enough to fit in today’s music market (especially with the current interest in Latin and latin-flavored music). The first, a bilingual (English/Spanish) number, entitled "Teresa Vive En Mi Cabeza" is up-tempo with a Latin/R&B flavor. I think it could conceivably have people singing along with the harmonies of the chorus as they dance to the infectious rhythm of the song.

The second is a common tale of unrequited love entitled "Picky Girl" and it is written from the viewpoint of the frustrated suitor. It is primarily an R&B ballad though, because of its universal theme, I do believe it too could potentially have a lot of crossover appeal.

Additionally, I have two other songs I hope to market which were completed in 2001 and 2004 respectively. The first, "To The Arms of Another", is a love song as is the second, "Love's Wonderful". I feel that they both have tremendous potential and either could be either a male or female solo performer's hit or they could work for a male-female duet. Hold on, they're comin'.