Being Discovered

My Story #50

Being Discovered

From the time that I was seven years old and first began to play piano on my own, learning from simply experimenting on the keyboard and from others' dropping a hint my way from time to time, I could not easily stay away from any keyboard that was around anywhere. Every time I saw a keyboard, whether it were in a story, in someone's house, or especially in a church auditorium, I just could not stay away from it.

When I first went to Lexington, Kentucky, and began to attend Ashland Avenue Baptist Church, the church doors were open all the time, day and night. As a result, I would go there from time to time, enter the building and go back to one of the Sunday School classes (or wherever I could find a piano) and began to practice.

Once, while I was practicing in Judge Adam's classroom, Bob Jones entered the room and had not heard me play the piano before. He listened for a little while and then approached me to see if I would play for a singing group. I told him that "I do not play that kind of music." Then he asked me if I would just practice with them. I said I would, and a time was set. The end of this story is that I have been practicing with a singing group ever since. This began our version of the Blue Grass Boys 59 years ago (1962).