by JTD7, ardmore, PA

Mom and Dad started me on piano lessons when I was in the second grade, and I played classical music and listened to classical music. When I reached high school, I started to explore other kinds of piano playing. I borrowed jazz recordings from the library, I listened to R&B on the radio.

Our family took a vacation together every summer at Bethany Beach, DE. Mom and Dad always rented a house with no TV, so we would entertain ourselves in the evenings with cards, board games, books . . . and a tinny little transistor radio with terrible reception. I discovered that the reception improved if I touched the antenna, so I would sit by it, holding the antenna with my thumb and forefinger, and listen to any music I could find.

I was grooving one evening to Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles?” I started playing the radio: I touched the antenna on each of his organ “stings” in the chorus, which really made them pop out. I was in my own little world, grooving on my contribution to Billy Preston’s songs, until the umpteenth time he sang “I got a song, I ain’t got no melody” and I heard my mother say in my ear: “Boy, he got that right!”