I grew up in Kansas City Kansas and like everybody in my neighborhood I got a guitar when I was about nine years old. There were bands everywhere. From the sixth grade on, everybody had a band. By the time I was 13 my brother and I put together a serious band with two brothers who lived next door to us. They were the sons of blues organist, Lawrence Wright from Oklahoma. We began playing colleges, house parties, reunions, and clubs around KCK. Our youthful quartet even played a three day rock festival put on by a motor cycle club called the "Vultures." Lawrence Wright sat in with us once at a reunion, but most of the time he'd get us to help him load the B-3 on the van. Albert Collins was playing with him those days and sometimes they would come over to borrow a drum pedal, guitar chord or something late at night. Our band stayed together until a few years after high school. I took up the saxophone in college and began playing Jazz and it was there that I met Dr. Eva Jessey. The 86 year old choral director was known all over the world for her work in the original production of George Gershwin's folk opera "Porgy and Bess." She taught me to sing the 100 year old songs her father sang to her from down south. In 1978 we appeared in a CBS Special Segment titled "Pioneers in Black Music" and that began my 30 year exile from playing the electric guitar. Most of my work as an acoustic blues performer has been in concert halls across the United States. I've played at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, US Embassy, Brazil, South Africa, and 1000's of lectures in schools and colleges. Eva Jessey taught the world that spirituals were serious music and I wanted to do the same thing with Traditional Blues. I have played with many names in the acoustic and electric blues world as well as receiving awards for traditional music performance. In 2006 I was hired to write the score for a PBS documentary. Since the music had to be Jazz and Blues it gave me a chance to rediscover my KCK electric roots. So here is a collection of a Funk' N Blues thang I 'm working on as well as music from the soundtrack, Folk songs and Blues from previous albums. Peace
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