On my 16th birthday, I did two things. I got my car and motorcycle driver’s license and I got a job bagging groceries at Albertson’s supermarket.

This was about the same time I began to realize that classical guitar is not a big thriller at normal parties attended by normal people. People don’t hold aloft their lighters and demand to hear a hit song form 1584. People would pluck out some lame, three-chord song by Foreigner and others would sing, smile, clap and call for more. I would play Greensleeves beautifully and there would be no sounds other than crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing by.

As I got to know one of the checkers (cashiers) at Albertson’s, Joe Maki, I learned that Joe was a guitar player. I would go to his renovated garage apartment and listen to him put on an album and play lead guitar along with the song. That was cool. That gets girls. That is what I thought I wanted to do. I wanted an amplifier. I wanted rock music. I wanted to be a crowd pleaser.

I talked to Joe about this. He suggested that I get an electric guitar and start going with it. It turned out that he had one he was willing to sell. We discussed it a bit further and I ended up purchasing a beautiful Ibanez guitar that was a shameless ripoff of a Gibson Les Paul Sunburst. This was my first electric guitar. Here she is:

20 years later (and 30 years after manufacture), she is still in beautiful condition. All original turning heads, knobs, pickups, etc. Everything is just as she was when Joe let the Old Lady go for $220. The only thing that has changed is that she was rewired a few months ago to replace some old wires. I wonder if Joe misses her. I never would have parted with this great guitar. I know Joe regrets selling her, because he told me so a few years later. I just wonder how much he misses her.

I was now armed with an electric guitar. I bought a $30 Gorilla amp to complete my electric set up. There were a few problems. Joe could play by ear. I couldn’t. I could not just listen to something and figure out how to play it. I had been classically trained and sat through years of musical theory. I was locked into the rigidity of classical music. Also, I had no music.

I solved the musical problem by going out and buying some sheet music for songs from Toto, ELO, Chris De Burgh, and others. However, I lacked someone to show me what to do. I lacked guidance. Thus, I became frustrated with the world of electric guitar. I didn’t play nearly as much as I could have or should have.

I was torn between two worlds, classical and rock. My classical guitar was suffering because I was distracted, and my rock guitar wasn’t doing anything at all becuase I had no idea what I was doing.

As I neared my 17th birthday, I was in a good situation. I was working full time as an overnight DJ at KVNU/KVFM radio stations. One of the perks we got from the station was free movies at a local theater chain. My best friend, Bill Hugo, worked as a ticket taker/projectionist at the same movie theater chain and also got free movies. Thus, it was free movies every day. It wasn’t too long before I met the other ticket taker/projectionist, Carl Hart. Little did I know the impact that meeting would have on all aspects of my life.

Carl was sharp, witty, intelligent, sarcastic, and great fun to be around. One day, i got a good look at his hands and was struck by his immaculate fingernails. That was the first hint that he was a guitar player. The second inkling I had that Carl was a guitar player was when a solid brass guitar pick fell out of his pocket at the theater one day.

Soon, I was over at Carl’s house. Looking at his beautiful vintage tweed tube amp and hearing the sweet distorted sounds and the cool, smooth clean sounds produced by that amp. I was intrigued at the loud, sharp sounds produced by the brass pick. After listening to Carl hammer out a few tunes, he suggested that we listened to some other music.

Carl introduced me to the new sounds of an unknown group called the Replacements and some no-name group called REM. Both bands would hit it big several years later and they would both sell their unique alternative styles for mass popularity and big dollars. After listening to this music for a couple of hours he suggested listening to something that he said was “a bit more wild.”

Then it happened. He put in a tape of a very old recording of something. The music had an unusual guitar rhythm, a driving, rousing harmonica, and some guy hollering, wailing, hooting and making other unusual noises between singing and playing the harmonica. I was instantly spellbound. I had never heard anything like that. Something was moving in me. I couldn’t sit still. I want to know what was and what they were doing.

“What the hell is that,” I asked. Carl said, “that is Sonny Terry on “Whoopin’ The Blues.”

The rest is history.

I left his house with tapes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and others. I ate it up. This music was talking to me. It was communicating with my soul. I wanted more. I wanted to play that.

Talking more with Carl, I learned that he played blues guitar. He invited me to bring my guitar over to his place for some instruction.

We sat down for a few sessions of learning the basic blues scales and some shuffles Carl had scratched out on a piece of paper.

That was also the year that the movie “Crossroads” came out. I was enthralled with the soundtrack, through which I was introduced to Steve Vai and Ry Cooder.

I was definitely taken with the blues. The blues had got a hold on me. The raw emotional sounds of the blues, the freedom of movement and meter in the music were awesome and new to me.

Because of my strict piano and guitar training, the years and years of listening to metronomes tick off the beats, and the proddings of “COUNT! COUNT!” from my teachers made me totally unready and unable to deal with playing from my heart, playing what I felt, toying with notes and time signatures, and other beautiful aspects of the blues. I couldn’t play the blues, but I knew that I couldn’t play classical guitar anymore. My heart just wasn’t into it any longer.

I quit taking guitar lessons and started looking for more blues. At that time, there was precious little going on in the world of blues. Old recordings weren’t available, and about the only current blues music available in Logan, Utah was Stevie Ray Vaughn and a few Johnny Winter records. I listened to what I could.

On a side note, Carl and I would have wide-ranging discussions on a huge variety of subjects. At one point, Carl went down with appendicitis, I rode my motorcycle to the hospital to visit him. During that lengthy visit, we got talking about something that led him to comment on my motorcycle and then to recommend that I read a book called “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig.

Not having anything else to read at that time, i bought the book. I couldn’t put it down. It hooked me. It was truly a life-changing book for me. Not only did it cause me look at life a little differently. but also, because of that book, I decided to major in philosophy at university.

As another year rolled around I took off, to Korea in 1988 at the age of 19 to spend two years as a missionary, Carl got married during that time and moved away, and we never hooked up again.

Carl Hart is singlehandedly responsible for turning me onto the blues, ruining playing classical guitar, introducing me to a fascinating and life-changing field of study. I am grateful to Carl for all of those things, but in particular for the gift of the blues. If you are ever in the Northern Utah area look for Carl and the rest of The Fender Benders band.

After my return from Korea I met another person that would impact my journey to the blues, Harry Harpoon.