My banjo playing career began in the spring of 1978. Several of the maintenance men where I worked (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio as a Research Nuclear Physicist) were spending their lunch hour playing bluegrass and country tunes back in one of the storerooms. One day they caught me with my ear up to the door listening. They were getting pretty good after playing together for several months. They asked me if I played an instrument. I said, "No", but I had played a ukulele in college in the '50's and played every song with only three chords. That is all I knew; well, there might have been one more chord, but I was not sure of what it was! They coaxed me to bring in my baritone uke and play with them. As they said, "It's just for fun!" A couple of months later I finally got my nerve up and brought my uke to work. I started practicing with them on my lunch hour. Sure enough after several months we began to sound pretty good. In fact, we were asked to play for the annual Fairborn, Ohio Ox Roast as a part of the afternoon's entertainment. We went to some hall to try out, and someone took our picture. We were asked what the name of our group was. The guitar player (the leader of the group) said we were the "The Ox Roast Specialist." I believe at the time I was the only bluegrass uke player in the world.



The guitar player was a very good lead guitarist and he played very hard. He also broke alot of "E" strings. I had a brilliant idea. I needed to get more volume out of the uke, and decided that I might be able to use some of the lead guitarist's broken "E" strings on the uke. I gather up some of the old strings. They were plenty long enough for my uke, but I could not keep it in tune! I would tune it up and play a song and by the end of the song the uke was out of tune. Now, as a physicist I should have realized what was happening, however, I was new to this playing business so nothing dawned on me!



There was a chemist (Dave) I knew working on the second floor of my lab that played a banjo in some group. On my next coffee break I went to see him about the tuning problem. He had the answer real quick. I should have known. The uke was designed to accommodate only nylon strings. It was not designed to support all steel strings, and the neck of the uke was bending, and the top was pulling away from the rest of the uke body. Dave said "Why don't you get a banjo and play the banjo tuned like your uke?" Well now, what a brilliant idea! Why didn't I think of that? Again, I was too new and never gave it a thought. I asked him if members of his group, the Kettering Banjo Society, ever sold their old banjos and upgraded to new banjos? Dave indicated that sometimes they did, and he would spread the word that someone was looking for a "cheap" banjo. I had in mind a price around $200.00.



A couple of months later Dave said that someone in his group had a banjo for sale. He said they only wanted $25.00 for it. I told him I'd take it! A couple of weeks later he brought me the tenor banjo. It was an old Sears and Roebuck Roy Smeck model with a rose wood finger board and a bakealite (an early form of plastic) pot. To me it looked and sounded great! My guys in the "Ox Roast Specialist" said, "Buy it, buy it!"



So I gave Dave the money and he promised to get me some music. Dave gave me all the music from the KBS (I think they only had about 20 songs in their repertoire at that time. Now they have over 400.)



I worked on the music all summer long just playing chords. By this time I had learned a couple of new chords from a guitar chord encyclopedia. I could play most of the songs with the music in front of me. However, I knew something was missing -- timing! So again, I asked Dave if KBS had ever made a tape of one of their shows. He said that they had made a tape on one of their Summer Art Series In The Park. A day or so later he brought me a copy. I was so excited that I took off work early to get home to play along with that tape. I put the tape in the recorder, got my banjo, and turned on the recorder ready to play along. Well, they had finished the song by the time I got through the first line! So I practiced another couple of months getting several of the songs up to speed. Now I felt I was ready to play with the Kettering Banjo Society. Soon thereafter I went to one of the KBS's rehearsals. There I found a mixed group of banjo players. Some had been playing banjo for fifty years or more, some had been playing banjo for only a few weeks. These guys and gals were playing chords all up and down the neck, and I no idea what they were doing. I didn't realize there was more than one "C" chord on the neck of the banjo.



Later in the early winter, I started taking banjo lessons, but after a few months the teacher could stand it no longer and moved away! Now that I was in the KBS I spread the word around that I wanted a better banjo. One of the fellows in the KBS collected banjos and brought in several for me to try over the next several weeks. I finally selected a Vega Professional that sounded really good (compared to what I had, anything sounded good.) The teacher that moved away came back to Dayton once a month and would give lessons to his old students. I found out about it and started taking lessons again. (I think he just wanted to see if I was still around.) So I took the Roy Smeck banjo to work so that I could practice my banjo lesson on my lunch hour -- I really needed the practice. Well, after having played on the Vega Professional for several weeks, I tried to play the Roy Smeck model at work and it was like trying to play a block of wood! I just could not play it.



Late in the summer of 1979 I heard about the Fretted Instrument Guild of America (FIGA). They were having an annual meeting that very week in Chicago It was just by a fluke that my wife and I managed to make last minute arrangements to go. It was the day before the convention was to start and the hotel still had a room! We took it! Next, could we get air line reservations? We got the last two seats! After the convention I almost took my banjo to the bath tub to drown it and put it out of its misery, especially after hearing the young people at the convention play. Fortunately, my wife said I should use their playing as a goal to shoot for. So we sent for Don Van Palthe's audio instruction tapes and books. (We had met Don in Chicago at the convention and my wife thought she could learn to play banjo after talking to Don.) Within a month my wife, Connie, was playing a plectrum solo! I decided I had better look into the plectrum banjo instruction book and listen to the tapes. Well, the rest is history. I did switch over to the plectrum banjo, and started taking lessons and I haven't missed a FIGA convention since. In fact I was FIGA's president for two years!