REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Discussion of history's greatest guitar player.

REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby DagerRande » Thu Oct 08, 2020 1:09 pm

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REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES
(10-8-54 to 9-4-02)

This isn’t the first time I’ve honored the memory of Tommy on his birthday, but I know that he wasn’t as well
known as some of the bigger names in the guitar world and I don't want him to be forgotten. However, many of
them knew him and respected him and considered him to be a friend. Chet Atkins was one of those.

Others who may read this, such as John Knowles, traveled and performed with him. I’m honored to have had a
26 year history of friendship with Tommy. Here are a few details of that history.

Tommy was born on 10-8-54 which means that last year he would have qualified for Medicare! We lost him on 9-
4-02, which was exactly 4 years to the day before we lost Steve Irwin (Crocodile Hunter) on 9-4-06. (Just a little
trivia)

He was only a month short of turning 48.


I have shared my story with a few of you, such as Audie Wykle. I first saw Tommy on the “Hee Haw” show In 1972. I was doing a few other things as Roy Clark was introducing him and I didn’t hear his name. Once he started playing I dropped everything I was doing and dropped my jaw instead! I hadn’t been this moved and inspired since the day I first heard Chet Atkins when I was 13! I was in tears and could hardly sleep that night! We didn’t have the technology in those days for me to replay that performance or to search the Internet to find out who he was.
The son of one of my friends who owned a local music store was a steel guitar player and traveled with the group “Dave and Sugar” and went to Nashville often and met Tommy on one of his visits. He heard my description of that performance and recognized him and told me that I was talking about Tommy Jones. That was in 1974 and I was moving to the Chattanooga, TN area to finish college. I went to a record store there and asked if they had recordings of Tommy Jones. They never heard of him but handed me this huge book to look through to see if I could find him. Some of you may remember these big books that list record companies and artists. I finally found it! The company was “Ovation Records” and Tommy’s seemed to be the only record they had listed. I immediately ordered his record. It took six months before it came in. During that time, I attended one of Chet’s concerts and his bass player that night was Henry Strzlecki, who some of you may remember from Chet’s concert in Oslo, Norway in the early 60’s. I talked to Henry after the concert and asked if he knew Tommy and he told me that he was behind the founding of Ovation Records and as I recall, he said that he did it to promote Tommy after other companies wouldn’t. That record finally came in and I felt like I had struck gold! I couldn’t listen to it enough and there were things that he did that I had never heard done before! Of course, this was relatively early in my exposure to a high level of fingerstyle.
In the early summer of 1976, a friend of mine had stayed at a hotel in Chattanooga and was looking at those pamphlets that are often in the rack in the lobby and saw an advertisement for the “Archie Campbell Hee Haw Show” that was going to be in Gatlinburg on July 5. There were pictures of some of Archie’s guests and one of them was Tommy Jones, who my friend remembered me talking about so he grabbed this brochure and brought it to me. I don’t think I would have ever found out about this otherwise! It’s as if it was destined to happen!

I was going to graduate at the end of that summer and I had a big test the next morning on July 6. This didn’t stop me from driving between three and four hours each way the night before to see Tommy! Some would consider me crazy and obsessed but that’s how overtaken I have been all my life with with people who had a high level of skill with the guitar or piano that I wanted to play that gave me something to shoot for.

As a side note to illustrate my level of obsession, Richard Smith has performed several times at "The Hedgehog" in Arcadia, IN. just North of Indianapolis and 3 times I've driven 200 each way to see him!

Back to my story, a good friend of mine at the time was David Rose, who later started “The Rose Festival” in the Nashville area. He and I played guitar together in the Army. He had never heard of Tommy Jones and I invited him to come with me. He became an instant fan that night! I also took a chance and brought along my Sony cassette recorder. Surprisingly, they had no problem with me walking in with that. This was in a hotel convention center and the majority of people were fans of Archie Campbell and probably had no idea who Tommy was, nor did they care. Archie came out and told his jokes and had everybody laughing but of course I was there to see Tommy. Archie finally brought him out and I think I was as intensely affected as those screaming fans were on the Ed Sullivan show when he brought out Elvis or the Beatles! When the show ended, I expected to be standing in a long line to meet Tommy and I probably shouldn’t have been shocked, but my friend and I were the only ones walking up to the stage while Tommy was on his knees putting his guitar in the case. He was 21 at the time and wouldn’t be 22 yet until October. I remember being quite nervous when he turned and looked at me and was very surprised when I told him that I driven between 3 and 4 hours from Chattanooga to see him. As I was holding my cassette recorder, I asked him if he wouldn't mind letting me record him playing something? He seemed very appreciative and anxious to allow that and suggested that we go to a back room, which we did and I will never forget that session, which lasted about 20 minutes!
David and I were blown away! I thanked Tommy profusely and he gave me his phone number to stay in touch and we made our way back home. I could hardly sleep that night and I knew I was facing a test the next morning at 8:00. I don’t know how I was able to do well on that test but I somehow managed!

I started my teaching career that Fall in Florida and stayed in touch with Tommy by phone, which was in the days when we had long-distance charges, which I was happy to pay for! My second school was in Missouri and then finally it was in Michigan at Cedar Lake Academy when I managed to work things out to get Tommy to come to the school to perform. He was going to be performing with Boots Randolph in Grand Rapids and he told me he would arrange for free tickets for me to attend and then the plan was for me to bring him back to my place and spend the night and do the show the next day. It was a strange feeling to show up after his show with Boots and see the strange looks on people’s faces as he walked away with me with his suitcase and guitar in hand and out to my car. I brought him home and he stayed in my daughter’s bedroom. The next morning my wife made breakfast for us and we spent the rest of the morning playing our guitars.

One piece of trivia that hardly anyone familiar with his repertoire knows, is that his song “Going Through the Changes” was actually the second title of that song. When he first introduced it to me at my house, he called it “Slip Away”. He told me years later that someone had convinced him to change it and I never knew why? I used to ask for that song by the old name and he would go right into it.

Another piece of trivia about that concert at our school, is that all he asked for was $50 plus ticket sales. That was in early February of 1982 and it was 5° that day and a lot of students were gone on a ski trip, and a lot of those in the community I think felt that it was too cold to come out to the school. So the audience was small and I was quite disappointed, even though I had advertised it enough in advance to have a much bigger crowd. I was able to accompany him on “Orange Blossom Special”, which was absolutely humiliating when you consider what he was doing at lightning speed, while “all I had to do” was to accompany him! I put that in quotes because I tried to do a “non-vanilla” fingerstyle accompaniment and even that can be difficult at high speed! After the concert, I drove Tommy back to Grand Rapids to meet back up with Boots and his group. On the way there, I still had the cassette that I recorded of him in 1976 and I played it for him in the car and he was quite critical of himself and saying that he thought he was playing too fast and didn’t play with enough “feeling”. I attribute that to “musical maturity“, which takes a while to develop and some never do.

The following year in the Summer of 1983 I rode my Honda Silver Wing bike down to Nashville and spent a w eek with him. He lived there for a short time and was playing at Boot’s club on Printers Alley 6 nights a week and I was with him every night I was there. During the daytime we did more than just to play guitar, such as him taking me 4-Wheeling in his Jeep out in the back fields and hills. We also went together to watch the “new” movie “Blue Thunder” with Roy Scheider from “Jaws”. Considering all of our experiences, I wish that smart-phone cameras had existed back then!

Tommy was very physically gifted when it came to the speed and accuracy of his nervous system. I would make up an exercise that was awkward to me, just to see him try it. He would then run though it a few times and then play it back to me at nearly twice the speed!

One thing I’m rather proud of is regarding the song “Huntin’ Boots”, recorded by Chet. Tommy and I were sitting there talking while unconsciously doodling around on our guitars and I started playing that middle section that some of you may recall. Tommy immediately recognized it and stopped what he was saying and asked me to show that to him. I never could play it very smoothly at Chet’s speed on the recording, but I played it slowly while Tommy carefully studied it. After 4 or 5 run-throughs, he was able to play it perfectly and up to speed! I was blown away at his natural ability! My “gift” has always been to be able to figure things out from the recordings but Tommy had the physical gift of being able to play them so smoothly and accurately. He was also a very gifted arranger in his interpretations.

In 1984 I moved from Michigan to Sacramento, California and from there I made several more trips to see Tommy when he was back living with his folks down in Florida, where he grew up. He actually grew up on the banks of the Suwanee River (as in “Way Down Upon The….), which inspired the famous song and where Tommy did a lot of fishing over the years.

Thanks to a couple of good friends of mine, I was able to make a VHS video in 1986 and then another one in 1988. I know that two or three of you have copies of these. Mark Pritcher, who runs the annual Chet Atkins convention in Nashville is one of these. I believe that Phil Hunt also does.

I managed to catch some of the “Huntin’ Boots experience” on VHS tape, that I hope to upload online at some point but I need to first “clean them up” a little and then I will. I also have footage of his folks and his pet buzzard, “Barney”.

My last time to be with Tommy was in his hotel room at the Sheraton at the convention in 1999. We managed to get in a few jam sessions back then in his room. That was my last year to attend for a while, once I saw Chet’s declining condition, which was only 2 years before he left us.

Tommy was quite sick toward the middle of 2002 and finally passed away on Sept. 4. I remained in touch with his mom for a few years afterward until she too passed on.

I learned a lot by watching and listening to Tommy. If I hadn’t already put in a lot of time on the guitar prior to my meeting and spending time with him, what I was observing would have been much more of a mystery than it was. Yet, there was still plenty of what he did for me to analyze and process for the rest of my life!

Rest in Peace, Tommy Jones! Oct. 4-1954. to Sept. 4-2002
Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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Re: REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby LMark » Thu Oct 08, 2020 8:43 pm

Rande, thank you for sharing with us this tribute to your friend. LMark
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Re: REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby Spadaro Paolo » Fri Oct 09, 2020 5:57 am

Thanks, great story.
Hope to see that video on vhs someday.

PS "going through the changes" is in my repertoire and I do it on my L5 or McGill.
Fantastic arrangement.

Paolo.
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Re: REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby DagerRande » Fri Oct 09, 2020 7:25 am

Thank you, LMark and Paolo. I'm going to try and improve the quality of both videos and combine the best parts and upload one single video. I will announce when I'm finished. I am not a very skilled video editor but I have Final Cut Pro and also a special plug-in especially designed to improve the quality of old VHS tapes. These are 32 and 34 years old!

Paolo, that's interesting that you play "Going Through the Changes". Now you know that the original name was "Slip-Away"!
Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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Re: REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby Ray Bohlken » Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:58 am

Rande, thanks for sharing your story about your friend. I spoke to him briefly at one of the conventions and he was nice to me. Sorry he left us at such a young age. Take care.
Ray
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Re: REMEMBERING TOMMY JONES 10-8-54 to 9-4-02

Postby DagerRande » Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:47 pm

I'm glad you got to meet him, Ray. My videos are 32 and 34 years old and they are grainy and i'm not sure how much hope there is to restore their image, but I'm going to try. I promise you one thing.....if I can't do much with them I'll upload them to YouTube anyway. I've already transferred them as mp4's to my computer.

It's interesting that neither Tommy nor Buster made it to 50! Richard still has until 12-12 next year, which is a little over a year. I believe he'll make it. :-)
Rande Dager

We are all capable of doing more than we think we can!
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