PianoMitch

Club. I made it through John Thompson #3 which included songs like “Fur Elise” and “Hungarian Rhapsody”. My older brother had taken lessons from our school band Teacher at the time, but was not taking any more students; I learned to play by be ear from by brother. One day my Federated Music teacher had me sight read a simple version of “The Entertainer”, which I played very well, just not exactly like the music; I was not her favorite student after that. We had an old Player Piano in the old house and we learned some songs from those old piano rolls, such as “No Place like Home”, “I’m forever Blowing Bubbles”. Other songs from this period were Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date” and “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue”
My dad was a leader at the Gospel Fellowship Church in Shallow Water. I played piano for hymns on Sunday and Wednesday nights as a teenager. My Mom’s favorite hymn today is still “Higher Ground”
As you may be aware, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, and Jimmy Swaggart were all cousins and learned to play from the same teacher. My brother Don, Cousin Alan, and I would put on mini concerts whenever we were together and play whatever new stuff we had learned since the last time. We would take turns playing piano, and say stuff like, “play this song”, mentioning a song I knew one of them could play. Alan had a better teacher and learned lots of Piano Rags like “Maple Leaf Rag”, “Root Beer Rag” (Billy Joel). My Brother, Dad and I played at all the small churches around the area, teen rallies, Christmas programs, just about anywhere that would invite us back. We did contemporary Christian songs from Dallas Holmes, Imperials, ect. Some of these were “Rise Again”. I also played bass guitar in a music teachers big band, trumpet in the highschool band, and guitar in a jazz band. Our highschool jazz band went on three-day tour of maybe 6 highschools and a concert in Kansas City. We played songs like “In the mood”. I also regularly played bass in big band made up of nearly all band teachers in western Kansas. Design>Build>Maintain: Instead of getting class ring when I was in high school, I bought a used banjo. I recorded flats and Scruggs off an 8-track to a reel-to-reel and played the songs at half-speed to hear what they were doing. Cripple Creek, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, I saw the light. I went to college at Colby, KS where I played guitar in a jazz band, trumpet in the pep band, and piano for a Dixieland band (made up of band teachers), ”Tin Roof Blues”. I learned some blue grass from Mike who was the computer manager at Colby and competed at the Winfield blue grass festival. At Kansas State University, the worship leader from Westview Wesleyan Church recruited me to play piano which I did most of the 2 years I was there. I was working on an Engineering degree and my advisor was not keen on me taking any music classes or performance groups. We did all the Michael W Smith Project songs. I took a job in Anadarko working for WFEC and have been there 30 years. We attended a Charismatic church that had split away from Bethel Baptist. We had a rocking worship band and played at a lot of events even some prisons. Over years, it became more charismatic and less Baptist so we moved the FBC Anadarko. I took some piano lessons from Gary Butler’s MIL (gospel lighthouse) and then at USAO from Joe Tiner in the middle 90’s. My wife’s two sisters are pretty good singers and I get them to sing for us whenever possible. We learned some old jazz classics: “Misty” (Ella Fitzgerald), “Someone to watch over me” Gershwin, and some newer like “Don’t Know Why” – Norah Jones. In the 1990’s a good friend and his wife divorced. They had 4 little kids and some trying times. They later remarried each other and now they pastor a church, not far from home. During this time I learn a Ricky Skaggs version of “Give us a Happy Home”. I also learned a Boss nova version of “What a Friend” from Carlos Garcia at a church in Cyril. In 2000 we moved to Chickasha and later started the airplane instruction and rental business – BTW our new ground school starts tonight at 6:30 pm. We joined FBC Chickasha and played various instruments at every opportunity with Jamie Killion. Jamie asked me one day if I had a trumpet, so I found who I had loaned my trumpet to, and started practicing. This Festival of lights, I played Christmas songs on nights that the weather was too bad to fly. We have three boys: Aaron 25, Wayne 19, Will 14. I forced them all to take piano lessons and encouraged them to learn other instruments also. Aaron learned all the Stevie Ray Vaughn songs and we played a Christianized version of “Pride and joy”. I like big band music and enjoyed hearing Denver and Mile High Orchestra doing “He Knows your Name”
With 31 years at the power company, I decided I would start playing more and lead a song each week at the local rotary club noon meeting, and play many open mics in the area. Recently wrote a couple of original songs.