I grew up singing the songs I learned from my grandmother in Northeast Texas. I began playing the songs of the rural South on ukulele at age 11. When I was 16 my mother saved up all her Green Stamps and ordered a Kay banjo for me which I quickly re-tuned to sound like a ukulele. I worked my way through college playing and teaching music. In 1971, I moved to Austin and had a chance to play at the Checquered Flag with some of the great Texas songwriters like Alan Damron, Rusty Weir, and Shake Russell.