Diary of a Player Read Online Free PDF

acting like he knew more than I did,” he said, clearly upset at my lack of respect. He summed it up:“Then Brad picked up the guitar and said, ‘No, that’s not how it’s done.
This
is how it’s done.’ And he played it so much better than me.”
    I was comfortable enough around him to be a bit of a show-off. After telling this to my father, my grandfather paused a moment, as if to consider the implications of what had just gone down. Then he said with all seriousness, “Doug, we better get Brad some real lessons. The boy’s better than me now.”

    W arren Jarvis really was a proud man, but his love and concern for me were much bigger than a little bruised pride. And so he decided that if I was going to have a real guitar teacher, then I ought to have the very best. I suppose he also figured that if I was really going to pass him by on the guitar, I might as well lap him too. So I didn’t just need a guitar teacher. I needed
the
guitar teacher. And in our little world in West Virginia, there was simply no guitar player better in my grandpa’s eyes than Hank Goddard.
    Clarence “Hank” Goddard was so much more than just your local garden-variety guitar god—he was a regional legendwith obvious world-class talent. Long before I met him, he’d already mastered his instrument and seen the world while playing with one of those great USO bands during the Korean War. This man was so incredibly fluent and expressive on the guitar that he could have gone anywhere and played with anyone on any given night. Clarence could play anything you requested by his own guitar heroes, like Les Paul, Chet Atkins, or Merle Travis.
    Clarence was nicknamed “Hank” after Hank Garland, a famously gifted Nashville cat who played on countless classic recordings by Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Roy Orbison. In all my years of touring and meeting some of the best instrumentalists the world has ever known, I can honestly say now that Hank Goddard was in the same class as any of them and better than most. But after serving in the Korean War, Hank Goddard came home and chose small-town living over the big time. Hank wanted to stay close to home and to his family, even though his extraordinary talent could have taken him to countless stages across the country. He would live out his days in quiet obscurity in the little town of Moundsville, West Virginia. But with the way Warren Jarvis saw it, I was raised thinking this man was one of the most successful guitarists in the entire world, a household name, an icon, someone everyoneknew, a legend. I remember shaking his hand at church when I first met him and running home and telling Papaw, “I met him! I actually met him! And I think I saw the calluses on his hands!” As if Eric Clapton had gone to our church and said hello to me one Sunday.
    By the time my grandfather came to the savvy and nervy conclusion that the great Hank Goddard was the one and only man to teach his grandson how to play guitar and turn him into a real player, Hank Goddard had already decided that he was pretty much done with making music for a living, and especially with teaching guitar to difficult little kids. He’d had some previous frustrating experiences trying to teach young people and had sworn off this tedious work for good.
    Still, my grandfather was convinced he knew what was best, and he enlisted his son-in-law to make it happen by whatever means necessary. When my father approached Hank—one of the nicest men who you could ever meet—about teaching me, he turned us down politely but flatly, saying, “Doug, I appreciate your faith in my abilities, but I really don’t have any interest in teaching right now.”
    As we all knew by now, my grandfather had never been one to take no for an answer, even if it meant a few hours in lockup. Based on his experiences with a far more stubbornyoung woman, the man had good reason to