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Ron Frederick: Lead Vocals & Rhythm Guitar
My earliest memories of music were of my Mom listening to the radio and singing along with Patti Page, Gogi Grant, The Everly Brothers, and Dean Martin. It was mostly the romantic ballads that got my attention. Those 50’s pop songs were corny but I loved them. Pop music in the 50’s was all about a great catchy melody and some naïve lyrics about falling in love forever (with the same person!)
Jailhouse Rock by Elvis was the first single I recall buying. Little did I know then that I would be singing that song in front of a dinner crowd at Cattlemen’s Restaurant on the Redondo Beach Pier every weekend for a couple years in the mid 70’s.
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Fred Grabert: Lead Guitar & Vocals
I became aware of music very early in my life. My mother’s family always played instruments and we sang at every family get together. Mostly hymns and carols. Sacred stuff. Never any popular music though. That was not encouraged. My siblings and I were all exposed to the more serious side of music. We were all signed up to take piano lessons and listened many times to the stories of the great composers on records: Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, Mozart, Schubert, etc. I liked that a lot.
Later on my sister discovered the ukulele and learned to play it. She learned some folk song type tunes on it: “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” and “This Land is Your Land”, which I thought was very cool. At the time I thought - hey, here’s an instrument that you can actually bring along and enjoy in the car on those long summer vacation road trips we used to take! And play along with the radio! Cool! One day, when she got tired of it, (or maybe because she thought it had become uncool) I borrowed it from her and learned how to play it and more or less kept it for myself. That was my first exposure to a stringed instrument. I still play the ukulele to this day.
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Dave Hall: Bass & Vocals
First of all, let me state the obvious. Yes, I was born and the date of that birth was January 28th in the year nineteen hundred and fifty two (Wow, a hell of a long time ago!). My family lived in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County, Redondo Beach to be exact. Aside from my mother and father, I have two older brothers and a younger sister.
Each one of us had some sort of musical training at a relatively early age, except for my brother Denny who was more into the sports thing (baseball, football etc.). My oldest brother Richard and my younger sister Ralene had piano lessons, but my first instrument turned out to be that rock and roll mainstay, the trombone. The trombone you ask, how in the world? Well, when I went to sign up for band in the fifth grade the band director went around the room asking each kid which instrument they would like to play. When he came to me I said, “I would like to play the trumpet”. That would give me a chance at a spot in James Brown’s horn section I thought for sure. The director asked me to stand up and once he saw I was one of the taller kids for my age he said, “you’re playing trombone”. And that was that. I started with piano lessons as well around the same time.
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Rychard Paine: Drums & Vocals
Ok. Here’s my story (I’m not sticking to it):
Music has always been in my family. My Grandfather (dad’s side) played in dance bands in the twenties and all the way up into the sixties. I also had various uncles and cousins that played in bands while I was growing up and I heard great stories about them. They played in Symphonies (Boston) and dance bands. My Dad played trumpet in school, my Mom played piano by ear. Music was always being played in our house on either the radio or TV.
My first musical experience was no other than Lawrence Welk. Every Saturday night we watched his show. I of course had a thing for the Lennon sisters. My parents even took me to a couple of shows at the Hollywood Palladium with them. However, I must say what I loved about the show was the dancing.
We lived in little farming community called Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley in California so our TV stations came out of Fresno and Bakersfield. Yeah, you guessed it.. Country & Western music. My Mom tells me that I always wanted to know when it was 4:00pm every day so I could watch a TV show out of Bakersfield call “Cousin Herb”. Total C&W. That must be why one of the bands I play in today is C&W.
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