So, let's do this: Confession time

Garland,

I'm not sure my memory is that good, it was a long long time ago, in another era.

Think this might be right, when I was about seven years old, a friend who lived very close, had a small plastic guitar with nylon strings for Christmas, he let me play it, I just liked the sound of it and played it many times.
A few years past and another friend had an Arch top real Acoustic guitar, same again, I just fell in love with the sound, I he let me play it many times.
So I suppose the answer is, just liked the looks and playing experience, mostly the sound, and how many sounds and rhythms that could be made with just one instrument.
If I analyse it, that's exactly the reason I still play today.
Was never to interested in singing and playing the guitar or copying other people's songs, probably the main reason why most people do play the guitar.
I really enjoy listening to other people playing the guitar, be it Acoustic, Electric or Classical guitar.
Basically I just like all stringed instruments.

I think it was hearing The Kingston Trio in 1959. Their music seemed accesable and I got a Burl Ives songbook from the ibrary with chord diagrams in the back and grabbed my brother's Hofner archtop, which he had neglected since quitting lessons. By 1960 I and a couple of other Boy Scouts formed a folk group called The Rovers Three and played a three song set in a Boy Scout talent show at the local church. I think we knew three chords each and sang The Gypsy Rover, Jesse James and The Sunday School Song.
We stayed together for a couple of years and had gotten much better and gotten better instruments over those years. I got a Goya dreadnought, Jim got a 5 string banjo and a 12-string guitar and Gary got a better six string.  We played a number of Hootenannies in school gyms and church basements during the great folk scare of the sixties.

That was the one that started the folk boom in the late fifties.  Many folkies later thought that they were too commercial, but I've saved my Kingston Trio LPs and I still like to play Scotch And Soda, but I can't get that smokey baritone that Bob Shane had.

Jim,

Nice playing and singing Jim.

Jim , that Scotch & Soda was excellent. I also enjoyed the story of your trio.

My dad got me started listening to the Kingston Trio many years ago, maybe around the beginning of high school. He stated that he got to see them live twice while he was a student at the University of Tennessee around 1961. When I first saw them on one of the album covers, I had a hard time believing they had been cool. They looked way too clean cut for words, and my first inclination was to say something along the lines of "The Three Singing Dweebs." My mother's a little younger than dad and was less enthralled with the folk scene, but even she said they had been quite popular and that I would likely enjoy them. They were both right, though some songs are better than others. I ended up friends in high school with another guy whose father had been a folk fan in his younger years in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and NYC, which lead me to discover the Limeliters and their live album.

Dad also told me about one of his friends and the band the friend started up at UT known as the Cumberland Trio. They came soooo close to making it big. One bad decision that seemed like a good idea at the time kept them from releasing an album, though they played tons of live shows and got at least one appearance on ABC TV's "Hootenanny" program. Here's one of their songs. One of them had managed to save an acetate test pressing of their ill-fated album, so they cleaned it up a bit and released it. Dad's friends with the man in the middle wearing glasses, Jerre Haskew.


Here's one from the test pressing:


As far as why I decided to play the guitar... Kind of hard to pin it to just one thing. One of my closer friends discovered around the time we were in 8th or 9th grade that the school had a guitar teacher on staff. The lessons weren't free, but they weren't out of reach for his family, so during the winter season, he worked with that teacher and got what I remember being a pretty decent guitar to learn on. By the time we were juniors, he entertained us on a fish camp weekend one evening, playing pretty well everything from "Enter Sandman" to "Tequila Sunrise" on his acoustic. He later started several bands and was part of the house band for one of the local bars. Around the time we were sophomores, my best friend got a nice Martin acoustic for Christmas and took lessons, though it turned out piano and organ were more his first love. But after a point, it kind of seemed like I was the only one of my circle who hadn't had a go at learning guitar. My parents weren't anti-music, but we didn't have a great deal of extra money to get into that the right way, so it had to wait.

I didn't own a guitar until I was around 30, and then it probably wasn't til I was closer to 40 before I felt like I had much skill for playing it. I'm still not someone who's all that good at it, but I enjoy trying and having guitars around in the house. I don't know if I'll ever perform in front of anyone or not, though Garland 's tales of his open mike adventures are good to hear. My barber keeps a D15M in his shop at all times, and he's trying to get me to come play on stage with his church's praise band. He said it's one of the best ways to learn and get good, so I might could be tempted. They used to play some at an assisted living center from time to time. Some of those folks are so hungry for something entertaining that they almost enjoy anything different.