I'd pretty much bottomed out in The Smoky Mountains. It was a classic fall from grace, marriage, business, house on the border of The National Park, The Mercedes Benz 280 SEL, 50 acres near Dollywood, you know...The Good Life. What followed was several years of poverty, working in a tourist shop, a three year old VW Van, playing music in Basket Clubs in The Off-Season. I was living in a little cabin with no heat or air. I drank and drugged far too much, rode my Kawasaki because it was cheap to drive, walked my dogs after work, and generally re-entered life in 1975 as a 34 year old single man with an 11 year old daughter and two little dogs. I remarried in August of 1977 after my new wife had finished graduate studies at The University of Tennessee. She accepted a position at Ole Miss and since I had basically nothing left to do with my mountain

life, I tagged along.

         I'd never lived in Ante-Bellum Time Zone before. I'd also never built a new life from scratch before. But as was said before, sometimes you just gotta' do what you just gotta' do. Oxford was then a small town of twenty-three thousand souls, nine thousand of which were college students. It was a town that had one clothing store, one movie theater, and a shitload of bars that catered to college students.
 

        My first gig in Oxford was as the Assistant Manager at 'The Peddler Steak House & Lounge', a marginally successful restaurant/bar that on occasion featured weekend entertainment. It booked bands with  names like 'Lennie & The C-Notes', put on a Backgammon Tournament every Wednesday Night that was attended by all The Iranian students in town, and otherwise tended to the adult alcohol needs of the community. The main lesson I learned in The Food Service Industry was...I never want to work in The Food Service Industry ever again.

        One Friday Night in the Spring of '78, four members of the Ole Miss Jazz Band showed up to play a couple sets and were under some degree of distress because their keyboard player hadn't shown up. They played a couple tunes without him and even with out the requisite keyboards, I could tell these guys were good. So I sidled over to the bass player and asked, "how would you feel if I sat in on The Fender Rhodes for a tune or two."

        He leaned back, gave me a top to bottom to top look and replied, "can you play 'Mercy Mercy Mercy' in E-Flat like Richard Tee with The Crusaders?" To which I said, 'Is Monk The Greatest Jazz Pianist of All Time?"

         He smiled. "Have at it, Pops."

         Now the Rhodes was about fifteen feet from where this snappy dialogue went down and in those fifteen feet I did my best to remember who Richard Tee was and if I could recall playing anything in E-Flat. But when a door opens you should walk through it even if you have no idea what you're getting into. I love playing The Fender Rhodes, and these guys were good, and I love playing music with good players, so into The Breach I walked.

                                                         1-2-3-4 ...and we were off.

         Now as a keyboard player I'm basically a 'comper'. 'Comping' is a musical term that comes from 'Accompanying' and 'Complementing' and I believe my best keyboard talent is making other players sound better. I'm not much of a soloist. I get my kicks from providing a musical bed that other players can solo on. And apparently I comped my way into the band that night. And playing KB's in that band was probably the most fun I ever had with a band. We did Crusaders, we did Earth, Wind, & Fire, we did Steely Dan. Yes, Virginia, we played Fusion Jazz. We became a weekly fixture at bars and lounges around Oxford, and did some road work in North Mississippi, in fact I played my last professional gig with that band on New Year's Eve 1979  at The Biscuit Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

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          On Guitar was Malcolm Cullen, one of the best guitar players I ever worked with. Malcolm loved Bushmills Irish Whiskey and rode that guitar hard. On drums? One of The Gooch Twins, either Larry or Gary. I always got them mixed up. On Alto? Can't remember his name...been a long time. and on The Fender Jazz Bass, the one and only Ralph Semmes, a man who lives his 'Groove'. Ralph has become a legendary player - as Rafael Semmes - in Jackson, Mississippi. Ralph first called me 'Pops' because I was older than everybody's father.

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             We were just normal old pieces of protoplasm walking through life but when we climbed on to The Stand, we became...

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                                                                           Groove Merchant

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