Biography
I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Frustrated with the busy streets of Indianapolis, my parents moved us to the small town of Jasonville, Indiana where I grew up. My mother signed my brother and I up for guitar lessons at a music store when we were about 9 and 11 years old. The teacher told her she was wasting her money because we weren't practicing at all (actually we just wanted to sit and here the teacher play ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’).
About a year or two later, my mother worked with a lady whose husband taught guitar from his home. I’m not sure if it was my persistence in trying to play or if my Dad wanted me to learn. Nonetheless, my dad drove me over to this guy’s house in Dugger, Indiana. Now Dugger is smaller than Jasonville, yet Dugger made it on the map in the movie ‘Hoosiers’. To get to Dugger, my dad would drive us on the back roads (from the old Embury Road) of Greene County down through the old mining roads. It was closer that way, but a slow dusty drive. Dad was more excited than I was, for some reason; having given up his Saturday morning in the work shop to drive me over there seemed odd.
Once we arrived, my dad introduced me to Mr. Derrell Blake. It must have been the first session that Derrell began taking me along the Mel Bay book that I had become very familiar with from my first teacher (blah!). I found myself wondering again if he was going to throw me out too. ‘Mary had a little lamb’ and ‘Two-string Polka’ was as far as I got in the book before. Then Derrell played it - his thumb picking version of those two songs changed how I looked at the guitar from then on.
I was a very shy kid, and I didn't tell him I wanted to learn how to play like him. But I went home and practiced really hard trying to get my thumb do ‘Chica-Boom’. I got a thumb pick like Derrell’s and tried my best to move my thumb the same time while my other fingers played the melody. My dad told Derrell the next week before the lesson, ‘I think Ronnie wants to learn how to play like you because that is all he did this week’. I can still see Derrell's face, raising his broad chin up in the air and looking down at me with a wink asking, ‘You want to learn to thumb pick?’ ‘Yea!’ I said.
Now, if you ask Derrell about me. He will tell you I was one of the best pickers that he had as a student and that out of all the ones he taught, I worked hard and took off with it (he knew how to motivate me). But he really downplays the patience and giftedness of teaching that he had. All I knew is that I wanted to play like him. He taught me the tunes, ‘Cannon Ball Rag’, ‘Trambone’, and how to even play those songs in Mel Bay's guitar method book with a thumb pick.
We lost touch after high school, then marriage and children came, and moving away seemed to forever separate the memory. However, after our two children moved out, I got the itch again in 2004 and bought a Martin guitar. I then started playing again every day and bought a DVD of Thom Bresh teaching the styles of Merle Travis (his father). I was amazed at how Mr. Bresh was showing the same tips on playing this style as Derrell showed me some 30 years ago.
I called Derrell in 2005 from Kansas City. Our reunion over the phone was great. He said he had been trying to find out where I was living, and what happened to me. I also visited him during our trip home on Thanksgiving of 2005 and you can view some photos, videos or listen to some mpegs here. Derell could still play numerous tunes, more than I remembered. He still had the teacher in him as he showed me some more stuff to work on.
Ron - The Guitar Man
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