I was born in Minneapolis. That’s in Minnesota. We lived in the big city, then in a couple of smaller towns around the state. When I was about five years old my mother convinced my father to move the family to the San Francisco Bay Area. We lived there for about a year and a half, but it didn’t take and we moved back to Minnesota. It would not be my last time in California.
I first heard live music at the knee of my uncle Ralph, who — it seemed to me — could play any song I requested on his ukulele. He and Aunt Margaret had six kids, and I was one of five, so family gatherings featured a lot of kids and a lot of singing, with Uncle Ralph as the slightly inebriated master of ceremonies. By virtue of his ukulele he was always the center of attention, and I thought “I’d like a piece of that.”
One day in 1956 I went by myself to see “Rock Around the Clock” at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Minnesota. Bill Haley and the Comets. Rock Around the Clock. Poodle skirts. Juvenile delinquents. Electric guitars. I got the fever that day, and I still haven’t recovered.
