stutter as well. Drumming and music were the only
things that made any sense at all. When I was in the
3rd grade my older sister Gayle (who was in 5th
grade) and I, along with two cousins in 6th and 7th,
Tom and David Hallal, went around and performed
for all the classes. It was an extremely white
European school, and we were as exotic as you got at
St. Gregory the Great in South Euclid, Ohio in the
late 50’s.
around and liked me, but he also saw how I struggled
with reading. In one lesson he asked me if I would
like to play a song with him – he could also play
marimba. That proved to be a life saver, and taught
me to become a tuneaholic. I loved to accompany
from the earliest of ages, I was five then.
My musical progression was always being spiced
up. When I was around age six my dad went to
Jamaica for an extended period. He returned with
many instruments and tons of calypso recordings.
Some years later, he and my mother went to Brazil
and did the same thing for me. A bit later in the
1960’s my family owned a bar/restaurant in the inner
That winter at Christmas my grandfather, Fred
Thomas, gave me a simple drum set. I started taking
lesson from a gentleman named Howard Brush who
had just come off the road from playing with Dean
Martin and Jerry Lewis. He had heard me play
city of Cleveland, where the clientele was primarily
black. The juke box had Miles Davis, Nancy Wilson,
Nat King Cole, James Brown, and at least half of the
tunes were by Ray Charles. My dad brought home
every 45 (rpm) that got replaced. It was a gold mine
for a white kid from the suburbs of Cleveland, and