I got my first guitar in June of 1962.  It cost $25 and the strings were 6 inches off the fretboard.  The very first song I attempted to learn was Greenback Dollar by The Kingston Trio.  I had an album called Sing A Song with The Kingston Trio that had the chords to all the songs right there on the inside of the double album cover.   I remember the tips of my fingers bleeding a lot as I tried to hold down those chords.  I also took guitar lessons for about six months, and decided to quit around the time I finished Alfred’s Basic Guitar Method, Volume One.  I was learning songs faster than they were teaching me how to read music, so what was the point?  I had no idea at the time how valuable knowing how to read music would become later on.

So I knew some Kingston Trio songs, I basically (very, very basically) knew how to read music, and I was learning songs by listening to records and trying to replicate the chords I was hearing.  And then came December of 1963.  The guy who lived next door to me got the album Peter, Paul and Mary (moving) for Christmas.  Knowing my interest in the guitar, he charged over to my house and told me I had to hear this song called ‘A Soalin’.  My concept of how to play the guitar hasn’t been the same since.  I attacked the finger-picking techniques on that album and haven’t stopped to this day.

A few years later, I was in my first band, “The Impacts”.  Motown was hot, and we covered music by The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Wilson Pickett and others.  Even though I was caught up in the “Soul Music” movement, I remember listening very carefully to the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and The Beach Boys.  These guys had modulations going on in their music and I was new to all that.  And, of course, the Beatles.  I think I tried to learn every Beatles’ song that Lennon, McCartney and Harrison ever wrote.  Incidentally, I never had a good electric guitar to use in the band.  One of the other members played the bass and lent me his Gibson.  Man, how I wanted one of those.  All the while, I’m still playing the $25 guitar at home.  Sadly, the band broke up before we all finished high school, and  I never did get a good electric guitar.