In May of 1974 my dad decided to take me to Eugene, Oregon for an afternoon concert at the Dixieland Jazz Society. He had heard of a youth band playing traditional jazz and they needed a banjo player.“ No Dad, I don’ t want to go” was my reply,” I want to play my 1920’ s banjo solos and that’ s it.” He convinced me it was a good idea and he was right. I joined the Jazz Minors that very day and started practicing with them most every weekend. We played all over much of the Willamette Valley in the next few years and in 1975 we were the first youth band to play the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee. We played a concert at the White House for President Carter, toured the US in the summer of 1977, and recorded a number of records together. We were hired by Disneyland in the summer of 1978 and became full time Disney employees in 1979. We played at the park for 5 years. It was sad to see it end but we were all growing up and life was pulling us apart. We played a 30 year reunion concert in Eugene, Oregon in 2007 and it was great to get back together again even for a short time.
During my Disney years I acquired a 1930 Vega Vox IV that I played for many years and also started playing guitar on a late 1920’ s Gibson L-5. The guitar helped me keep my musical sanity while playing the banjo for 40 hours a week at Disneyland. I listened to Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass and Tal Farlow and studied with Howard Alden while he was still in the Southern California area. I went through a number of guitars in those days: an absolutely beautiful blonde Gibson Super 400, an original Maccaferri with the internal sound chamber, and an original Selmer Petite Bouche like Django played.
Leaving Disneyland had a dramatic effect on my bank account and so I took a drafting job with a Civil Engineer named Steve Simpson. I had met Steve at a banjo jam session, he played tenor and five string and loved banjo music of all sorts. A friend of Steve’ s was opening a
22 ALL FRETS JULY / AUGUST 2018