In 1980 I attended Jeff Newman's school (Jeffran College) in Nashville (Hermitage), TN. I returned to Nashville in 1983 and 1984 because Jeff brought Buddy Emmons to the college to teach C6th. These times were the highlights of my musical education. What can top spending eight hours a day, five days a week with the "World's Foremost Steel Guitarist"?
If my old memory serves me correctly, we would start bright and early every morning as soon as the "Big E" walked in. Jeff and Buddy had worked hard to have tablature ready for everything we were to work on that day. Each student brought their own steel guitar to the class and I chose to bring my double-neck Sho-Bud...since this WAS a study in C6th. Each student had a cassette recorder/player (remember those?) and a set of headphones. Buddy would show us how a piece was supposed to sound and we would spend a few minutes playing along with a rhythm track trying to play it like he did (yeah...right!). Noon would eventually roll around and we'd have lunch somewhere, then hit the tab again in the afternoon.
On Wednesday or Thursday night (come on memory!) Buddy would bring in the rest of the heavyweights and "show us how it's done!" as Charlie Daniels would say. Phil Baugh on guitar, Duke Dumas on bass and John Stacey on drums. Man, we went through a lot of cassette tape during those weeks!
Some of the other players in my classes were: John Fabian (Carter Steel Guitar), Jeff Pederson (Clint Black), Tim Lusby (Daryl Singletary), Steve Palousek (Emmons Co., Ray Price, etc.), and Janet Lynn. After the 1983 class, I believe we all came back in 1984.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
