Enjoyable, Love, and Cash – CHARLIE PEACOCK

The first musical instrument I ever performed was the piano at my paternal grandmother’s home.

After that, I acquired a drum follow pad and a pair of sticks. My dad, a skilled musician, was all about studying the basics first: R L R L and so forth—gradual then quicker. Then got here the clarinet, as a result of, effectively, I wished a saxophone. Then I performed cornet, which is a shorter, form of squished trumpet. After I grew a bit larger, my dad acquired me the true factor—a trumpet (what I wished within the first place). These minor disappointments apart, having a musician father got here with a giant upside.

In my freshman yr of highschool, I performed trumpet in Blind Horse, a Yuba City rock band led by some upperclassmen. We have been, I believe, fairly good—had a light-weight present, Warren’s Hammond B3—trumpet and trombone—performed each tune on the charts that integrated horns.

Simultaneously, I used to be getting critical about educating myself piano and guitar. My dad had constructed a music room in half of our storage and outfitted it with an upright piano and a Yamaha nylon string guitar. If Dad wasn’t in there, I used to be. It’s the place I wrote my first songs and discovered piano effectively sufficient to play gigs. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than I’d added a drum set and two 2-Track stereo 1/4” tape recorders to do “sound on sound” recording.

After Blind Horse broke up, I began taking part in the occasional weekend gig in saxophonist/vocalist Rod Battaglia’s band (he was perhaps ten years older than us high-schoolers). He wished me to play trumpet and an electrical keyboard. Not having a keyboard of any selection, a sort elementary college band director named Mr. Matthews (the husband of my Sixth-grade instructor) lent me a Farfisa combo organ.

I performed this organ for a few yr—an instrument completely suited to Santana’s “Evil Ways” and CCR’s “Proud Mary.” I didn’t drive but, so this early part of getting paid for taking part in music concerned hitching a trip, often with bass participant, Dan Barth.

Drummer Scott Usedom, guitarist David Zook, and I thought of our gig with Rod to be “paying our dues” and making good cash (actually extra coin that we’d get with minimal wage jobs ). But our dream was to have a band that performed the music of Jeff Beck, Miles Davis, The Allman Brothers, and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Scott’s father was the principal of Gray Avenue Elementary, and so we started working towards there, engaged on the dream. By then I’d returned the borrowed Farfisa organ and bought a model new keyboard, a Wurlitzer 200A Electronic Piano (at 15, my first big-time buy on a cost plan).

I rapidly augmented the piano with an orginal Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah-wah pedal. Note, whereas we made between $30 and $50 an evening, I additionally labored part-time for W.T. Grants (my dad and mom have been supportive however they’d nothing left over—in reality my dad performed his personal gigs for extra cash). I’ve no reminiscence of the identify of our band or ever taking part in a gig, besides that we positioned (second?) in a Yuba-Sutter Battle of the Bands on the fairgrounds. I do recall we carried out songs from the aforementioned artists, together with the Allman Brothers’ “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (the Fillmore model) and “Right Off” from Miles’ Jack Johnson album.

At sixteen, I purchased just a little Datsun truck to haul my gear to gigs. A DJ on the Top-40 radio station, Rick Gibson—additionally a budding recording engineer—had recorded two of my authentic vocal songs for me (each impressed by my girlfriend Andi Berrier). I’d already been to Asylum Records on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to personally drop the recordings off to David Geffen. He’d signed Jackson Browne. Wasn’t I the subsequent most blatant alternative? Chuck Ashworth from Yuba City along with his two songs and solely two songs?

By then, 4 streams of music held my consideration most, together with at the least one main nation music outlier. I used to be devouring a bundle of jazz, blues, and funk; I performed numerous rock and Top-40 pop—particularly the NorCal selection; and I completely liked soul music like Al Green and Gladys Knight. James Taylor and Jackson Browne expressed my teen-love angst like no different singer-songwriters. And then there was Kris Kristofferson (“a walking contradiction”). Andi introduced Cat Stevens, Carole King, Carly Simon, and Joni into the combination. When we first began “going steady” I purchased her the newest Cat Stevens’ album.

Also at 16, I left highschool as a junior, and took lessons at our local people school. This was my first introduction to synthesizers. A brand new teacher had simply come on board and talked the college into investing in a synth lab (assume a number of Mini-Moogs and an ARP 2600).

These novelties didn’t hook me but—synths have been nonetheless solely monophonic—no chords. I used to be able to commerce my Wurlitzer 200A in for a Fender Rhodes electrical piano, although. The school had one. Playing it satisfied me that I’d by no means get the Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea sound with out one. True sufficient.

I needed to begin with a used one, although. Fender Rhodes electrical pianos have been twice the worth of the Wurlitzer again then. Fortunately, my potential on piano rapidly eclipsed my trumpet chops, and there was all the time a gig—even when they didn’t pay effectively (I’d play a jazz gig for $15 simply to have likelihood to stretch out and improvise). I practiced many hours a day and saved that piano till we (Andi and I) wanted money greater than the instrument (I used to be nonetheless paying my proverbial dues).

Nevertheless, that first Fender Rhodes was the piano I performed after I was within the Sacramento funk/world music band The Runners for a yr, after I was in The Planets (first time I wrote for a band—see beneath), and after I scored my first legit weekly jazz gig at The Bull Market in Sacramento with bassist Alphonza Kee (including drummer Craig Kearney later), and a lot extra. That piano acquired round—greater than I ever knew.

Listen to this 1977 4-Track Recording of NorCal soul-funk band, The Planets’ “I Fall Hard”— it’s a quick Rhodes piano solo. I don’t bear in mind when in ‘77 this was recorded, so I was either 20 or 21—depends on whether it was post-August 10th or not—either way, almost 50 years ago!

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I share the full story of that particular Fender Rhodes piano in my book Roots & Rhythm—it’s wild. Yep, pianos can get loopy. See for your self within the excerpt beneath.