J.R.'s Biography

I was first exposeed to a guitar around the age of five by fooling with my dad's untuned and long unplayed Kalamazoo, and after spending a couple of wasted years on piano lessons, I was allowed to return to my guitar (now tuned but still unplayed). After getting all the knowledge I could from my dad, I was forced to literally teach myself as there were virtually no guitar players running around loose in the early '50s. In 1957 I was offered a gig with three guys much older than me and I began working in a very popular club in upstate NY called the "Tradewinds" with one of the guys having to act as my "baby-sitter" due to my tender age. We played Wed., Fri., and Sat. nites for the regular crowd, and Sun. afternoons for the under 18 crowd. At $50 a nite, I was the richest kid in 8th grade. I played with those same guys until I went off to Penn State for 4 years and then into the military for 8 years, of which half was spent in the Republic of Vietnam. When I returned home in 1970 I landed a job with a singer named "Ginger McChord", and then did a duo with another guitar player for a couple of years. I was discharged in July of '72 and moved to Jackson, MS which had a fairly good music scene....lots of pickers and lots of places to play. After a year in hell playing with a drunken Elvis wannabee, I left and started my own four piece group called "The Goodlife", and we lasted about 6 years before everyone got tired of everyone else. Playing six nights a week in hotel lounges will grate on your nervous system after a short while. It was while playing with this group that I first got involved learning pedal steel. I bought a Sho-Bud Maverick and kept it in the room for about a year until everyone thought I was good enough to bring it on stage for one or two numbers a night. Trouble was, it turned into all night every night within another year and I discovered that I was working WAY too hard, so I put it up and stopped playing it in public for many years. I also managed to be playing at Rosie O'Grady's in Memphis when Elvis decided to bite the big one. What most folks don't remember is that there was a HUGE Shriner's convention in town that week making the whole experience just that more surreal. What a mess! After the road I went to work with Chip Todd at the Peavey Guitar Factory in Meridian, MS and I met one of the main influences in my guitar life....Charlie Gressett. Charlie, with some minor help from me, was responsible for making all the custom guitars for all the Peavey clients out there including Sly Stone, ZZ Top and the "officially non-existant" doubleneck for Neil Schon of Journey. We formed the "Peavey Guitar Shop Band and appeared 4 nights a week at a great club in town and Hartley Peavey made sure we got everything we needed. in !980 I opened my own repair and custom shop in Jackson called, oddly enough, JR's Guitars, but almost immediately I started to get requests for band engagements, so I resurrected the "Goodlife" with the exception of doing it with drummer Jim Hathcock and bassist Aubrey Barnette and a keyboard player du jour. It was this group that backed Terry Bradshaw, Dorothy Moore (Misty Blue), Joe-Frank Corolla of "Hamilton, Joe-Frank and Reynolds" an opened for acts like "Alabama" and "Ronnie Milsaps". I still play with these same goobers today and we have appeared under such names as "Madison Station", "Mountain Oyster Cult", "House Dressing" and, my personal favorite, "A Great Big Steaming Pile of Us".

Posted at Musicians Home as a Blog

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