When did you start to love music and why?

When I was a tot my parents had one of those Zenith consoles where the speakers folded outwards and the turntable folded down. This was after the console with the TV, AM FM radio, and turntable with the Cobra arm. I don't remember using the earlier one, but do remember using the later one, playing Bo Diddly, Bent Fabric, etc. lps, and countless 7 inch 45's my mother had. Poison Ivy, Running Bear, what memories!

Then the transistor radios came out and those were just the greatest!

Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard in a record store where you could take records into a private booth and listen for free! It was right next to the show we all went to every Saturday afternoon

FZ once told to crowd before performing his "Reggae version of Ring of Fire" that "...Unfortunately his wife got sick and he will not be able to sing with us. Who is OK if we're going to sing it without Johny Cash?"
Ghosh I LOVE THIS ALBUM!!!

I've always joked that the little northwest Texas town where I grew up was halfway between Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, but it's true. Buddy Holly in Lubbock and Roy Orbison in Wink.

When I was maybe ten years old I got a Sylvania portable transistor radio for Christmas, turquoise and white plastic and about the size of a thick paperback book.. My bedroom was in a coverted porch that wasn't connected to the rest of the house so I could stay up as long as I wanted listening to that radio.

The later it got the more AM stations I could pull in from the empty West Texas sky. I became hooked on the border radio stations with DJ's like Wolfman Jack. I could pick up Chicago, New Orleans, Nashville and the gold standard, KOMA in Oklahoma City. It was a crazy mix of rockabilly and blues, conjunto and country - and old gospel music mixed in by those whacko, "Put your hands on the radio and be saved" preachers. There was no classical music, no time, no way.

I suppose that's why my musical tastes now are as diverse - some would say eccentric - as they are. And I'm grateful.

I love these stories!