HOP II:

“Dadgummit! Leave that alone!” I was thoroughly hacked off at Jim. Just because he was the co-founder of the record label (the first two letters of his last name began its name), didn’t mean he could just mess with my sound at a whim. “What the heck are you tryin’ to accomplish?” I was really hacked-off. “I just wanted to try and turn you down a little bit, is all.” Jim murmured. “I was set where he wants me,” I pointed through the control room window at Rudy, the engineer. He was now in conversation with Chips, who was producing our tracks. I looked back at Jim, disappointed. “We worked for half an hour to get the sound they wanted.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” “I know it’s really loud in the room here, but that’s what I have to have for the feedback and sustain I need in the lead breaks. If I was playing my black ’59 Les Paul, I’d have more sustain – even with my ES-335, I’d get more.” “That’s your red guitar, right?” “Yeah Jim, and it’s got sustain for days.” “I cain’t say I ever saw you with this one. Sure is pretty, though. What is it?” “This is a ’61 Les Paul. Looks pretty distinct from my black ’59, doesn’t it?” “Yeah. How come they’re so different?” “Gibson designed this model as a new guitar for Les, but he didn’t like it. He told them to take his name off of it. They did, and they went back to making the old model after a coupla years. They put Les’s name back on that style. But, they kept on making this model, and they called it the SG.” I motioned for him to look at a specific spot on my guitar. “Look here, Jim.” I showed him the nameplate at the base of the fretboard where it plainly said, “Les Paul Custom”. “Well Hoss, how come you picked this one for today? Gotta be a reason.” “It’s the fastest-playing of the three. Particularly in the upper registers above the twelfth fret,” I explained to Jim. “Lewie Steinberg’s set up this bass line that really jumps – so, I’ve gotta be fast to keep up with him.” “I know how Lewie is,” Jim intoned, nodding in agreement with himself. After all that, and the adjustment required to put things back the way they had been, the recording went off without a hitch. Sitting around in the control room afterward, and listening to the playback with everyone else, I thought we were essentially finished. Jim Stewart had a rather pensive look on his face before he spoke. “It needs something else – it ain’t finished, yet.” “What else does it possibly need?” I could not keep my big, fat mouth shut. The old country fiddler and studio head gave out with one dreaded word. “Banjo.” Again, I couldn’t keep my stinkin’ mouth shut. “I have a banjo at home.” “Go git it, boy – and let’s tie a knot on this thang.” I could not argue with such articulate logic, so off across Memphis I went. It took more than an hour for me to return – Memphis was forty five miles wide at that time – with my 1930 “The Gibson” tenor banjo. As I walked out of my house with it and crunched across the gravel driveway, I thought about how I had come to have it in the first place. The memory took me back more than ten years. The story of how I came to have that instrument is worth the telling in its own right. ********** One day, my little brother Steve and I were chopping away some rugged brush and bushes which had overgrown an area Mrs. Terry wanted to use for new plantings. I was eight, and I was using a regular axe. You probably can easily see where this is going. After I’d chop something out, Steve would drag it off to the pile we were creating. While he was off with the previous load and adding it to the brush pile, I’d started chopping on the next victim of my onslaught. I felt like I had really gotten the hang of this axe thing. Pang! Sproing! “Owww!!” I yelled loudly for Steve, because I could not see to move. Blood was running profusely down my forehead and into my eyes, blinding me. The axe head had struck an unseen line of old fencing which was still under a little tension, and had rebounded back – striking me in the forehead. At least it was the blunt side of the axe head, and not the sharpened edge, or I wouldn’t be the one writing this tale for you. Steve came running over toward me, saw my current state, and immediately began to cry. I told him to go get Mom (Dad was at work), but all he could do was stand there and weep – after all, he was barely six. I started yelling for Mom or Mrs. Terry. I yelled as loudly as I could and got blood in my mouth, but Mom came over fairly quickly. She immediately assessed the situation, and found something cloth to wipe away some of the blood. She told me to hold the cloth tight against my forehead, thus allowing me to see. She escorted both her boys back to our old house next door, where I sat in the kitchen and Mom bandaged me up. This was a scenario which was repeated many times over the years. Now, when I tell people I was born on a Friday the thirteenth and hit myself in the head with an axe, most of them will look at me with a rather sympathetic gaze and say, “That explains a lot!” The incident introduced me to the peril of unseen pitfalls and hidden dangers. The Lord helped me navigate through them many times in my life. See this on the pages of HOP II: Rocker on the Stages of Life. ENJOY!!!