I’m glad you asked. I am a 57 year old guy who was born in New Britain, Connecticut that lived the music scene of the 60’s and 70’s. My music career started as a 10 year old who wanted to play the accordion. Yes, you read it right. I wanted to play the accursed squeeze box. My father got me lessons from an award winning accordionist, a very sweet young lady who had lots of patience with kids. I remember doing accordion duets with Eileen during some of my lessons. We seemed to sound so good together. For some reason I had to stop lessons for about a year but started up again with Floyd, a butcher by day and accordionist by night. Floyd was not a patient man. He was down right mean to the bone and after about 6 months of lessons from this butcher, he threw me out. I mean, he kicked me out of his studio, a smelly basement with a music stand, and made me sit by the road till my father came and got me. I HATE YOU FLOYD!!!!!!
However, the reason for my short stint with Floyd, the hated butcher/accordionist, was because I was getting hooked on the music of the 60’s, and I don’t mean Dick Contino and Myron Floren, either. The one thing I noticed about Rock and Roll was, there was no accordion player. How much different “Sympathy For The Devil” would have sounded with an accordion!!! To top it off, all my friends were buying Fender and Gibson guitars, and one friend had a double set of Slingerland drums, and they weren’t playing waltzes and polkas. There was no room for me.
Somehow I got the idea that I can make an easy transition to a compact organ. My father knew I loved music and must have felt sympathy for me because he went out and bought me a Vox Jaguar organ and a small amp. I LOVE YOU, DAD!!!!! I remember the night that my dad’s friend brought it over. He had upgraded his equipment and sold dad the Jaguar. He fired up the organ and amp and played the Doors, “Light My Fire” and I just about wet my PJ’s, I was so happy. WAHOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I was on my way.
I made the transition from accordion to organ in spite of my left hand being lost in space and looking for buttons to push rather than keys to play. But, I got in my first band, bought a better amp, a Traynor YBA-1 with a 6x10 cabinet, build another cabinet just like the Traynor, and started getting orders for speaker cabinets. My Industrial Arts teacher stopped me from building after my fifth or sixth enclosure, so I started building in my dad’s shop.
Those were the days of humble beginnings as a musician and builder. I went on to better equipment (Hammond B3, Leslie 122 RV, a couple of Fender Rhodes Stage Pianos, Nords, etc.), and better building techniques. I now also play some bass guitar, and, though I’m not active in a band, I enjoy helping musicians sound better by building speaker cabinets they can bank on.
GUARD YOUR TONE!!!!!
