I was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, near Charlottesville, cradled by the arms of my beloved "Blue Ridge Mountains" on November 2, 1950, also the home of Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, "Now mind your manners Michelle, " James Madison, James Monroe, University of Virginia, Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, Conquerors of the Northwest Territory, and the "Monticello Plantation", "American Birthplace" of what later would become the five-string banjo. Mr Jefferson writes about an instrument his slaves would use to entertain themselves he refers to as the "Ban-Jar", which later would evolve into "Mr. Sweeney's" five-string banjo. Mr Jefferson was a fiddle player himself so it wasn't difficult for me to imagine the surrounding countryside alive with the energizing sound of a brisk "Hoe Down" or a "Virginia Reel". I remember when I was learning how to play banjo, my father would tell me stories of attending square dances hosted by an adjacent former plantation known as "Forest Lodge" on saturday nights, and telling me that "the banjo player and the fiddle player would play all night long for a ham sandwich and a glass of homeade wine". The more things change, the more things stay the same! Rest in peace Dad!

If you ever visit Mr Jefferson's "Little Mountain", look to your southwest between Carter Mountain and Dudley Mountain and you will see the place of my birth, about seven miles away. And yes, Carter Mountain is the ancestoral home of the "First Family of Country Music", the "Carter Family". When "June Carter Cash" and her husband "Johnny Cash" lived in Charlottesville, June was quoted once as having said "I want to be close to my roots beside Monticello". Somewhere between the melodies played by Mr. Jefferson on his fiddle and the ones played by his slaves on their banjo, a "Great Nation" was born, in harmony, called the "United States of America". With music like that, where he found time to write the "Declaration of Independence" and his slaves found time to clear the land, is anybody's guess! They both were visionaries!

I started to school when I was six years old and all the neighborhood kids would meet at my house for the school bus stop because it was centrally located. The kids in our neighborhood back then could be down right mean. I made friends with someone in the same grade named James "Gibson". His family were tenants on the farm across the road known as "Richlands". That meant they exchanged their labor on the farm for house rent. The other kids would give James "green apples and ex-lax" to eat and tell him they were candy bars resulting in a most embrassing moment! All the kids would laugh at him! Later in life I learned James had been stabbed to death in prison where he was doing time. I often wondered if the way the kids in the neighborhood treated him had anything to do with his circumstances and ultimate death. To this day I won't have anything to do with a practical joke! I feel so sad for him! James "Gibson" was my first best friend!

I remember my mother taking me to my first concert in Lovingston, Virginia to a function hosted by the REA Power Company.(Rual Electric Association) We were members so we got an invitation. The entertainment featured "Sunshine Sue" an act from the "Old Dominion Barn Dance" in Richmond,Virginia broadcast on WRVA AM/FM Radio. I don't remember any of her songs but what I do remember is the sight and beautiful tonal qualities of the five-string banjo that someone played in her band. I was encouraged to play the banjo because some of the only memories my mother had of her father was of him playing the banjo. I guess I reminded her of her father when I played banjo. She was my biggest fan! Her father and mother died at an early age and left my mother and her two sisters orphaned. Man she could tell you some stories! My mother loved her seven children dearly, I was the seventh! Could it be because she knew what it felt like to lose the love of parents so early in life? She was the best!

I started playing banjo when I was about eight or ten years old and a few years later met Earl Scruggs, he let me play his old "Gibson" Mastertone five-string banjo, and it was all over with. I had been bitten by the banjo bug. Later I learned that the "Gibson" Mastertone banjo he had let me play was the same one he had used to record "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with, which became the soundtrack to the "Academy Award Winning" Motion Picture" Bonnie and Clyde", featuring Warren Beaty and Faye Dunnaway. Not to be confused with the original version cut in 1948.

When I was about thirteen years old I negotiated my own live weekly radio show on WJMA in Orange, Virginia! I was too young to drive so a friend of mine who loved my banjo pickin' named Harvey "Gibson" would come pick me up and drive me to the radio station so I could play the show. Well,he would sit in the car and listen to the show on the car radio and nurse on a bottle of "Virginia Gentleman" bourbon until I had finished. If I felt it was unsafe for him to drive me home, he would let me take the wheel and drive! The road from Orange to Charlottesville is narrow and very crooked but somehow we always made it home safely.

Well, I was young and restless and when I finished school the call of the wild beckoned, so I sold my banjo to get the money to catch a flight from Washington DC to St. Louis, Missouri where my brother Jacob was engineering for the Norfolk and Western Railroad. He would "Highball" the engine as I would pick and sing Washball Cannonball on his guitar while crossing the Mississipi River at Hannibal, Missouri, going sixty MPH, pulling over one hundred boxcars!.Those were the days my friend!

Well, shortly after I arrived in the "Show Me State", I went to see "Tex Ritter" , at the "Frontier Jamboree", a country music theater, one saturday night located in Marceline, Missouri. (Birthplace and Boyhood home of Entertainment Mogul Walt Disney) I had sold my banjo, but I still had my picks and took them along that night just in case I met with opportunity. I noticed that a bluegrass band was on the show named "The Sally Mountain Gang" featuring eight year old soon-to-be "Bluegrass Legend" Rhonda Vincent and her family band. I needed a steady job so I walked backstage during intermission and boldly told Johnny Vincent, Rhonda's Dad, that he needed a banjo player because he couldn't play the fiddle, dobro, guitar and banjo all at the same time! And that "I" was the answer to his prayers. He agreed, took a dip of snuff, took off the "Gibson" Mastertone RB 250 Bowtie banjo that he was rehearsing with, handed it to me, I put on my picks, and in an impromptu audition, with "Tex Ritter" as witness, played "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". I was hired on the spot, got a standing ovation on the second show that night and the rest of the story is part of bluegrass history! I was about twenty years old , landed a job playing banjo with Rhonda Vincent and booking her family band on the road, throughout the mid-west and appearing regularly on the "Frontier Jamboree" as a featured vocalist all in one night, was a day to remember. The association is still alive today. Well all but "Tex Ritter" who has since departed for "Hillbilly Heaven" sitting on a bench in the Nashville city jail trying to break out one of his musicians. When I was getting "Clinton Gregory" out of jail in Nashville, I often thought about Tex's bad luck that day and prayed the same thing didn't happen to me!

While I was a featured banjo player and vocalist at The "Frontier Jamboree", I appeared with Legendary Artists that include: The "King of Country Music" Roy Acuff "Wabash Cannonball", Ernest Tubb "Waltz Across Texas", Freddy Hart "Easy Lovin", Tex Ritter "Theme song to the Motion Picture "High Noon" staring Gary Cooper", Lonzo and Oscar "Out of Hand", Cal Smith "Drinkin' Champagn, Country Bumpkin" Billy Grammer "Gotta Travel On and Father of "The Grammer Guitar," and Conway Twitty "It's Only Make Believe" plus a host of other "Legendary Recording Artists" of the era. When I retired from actively playing banjo, guess who I gave my "Gibson" Mastertone" banjo to. Three guesses! First two don't count! The night I went to see Tex Ritter, (actor John Ritter's father and western movie star) turned out to be the single most defining moment, to date, of my career if not my life.

But I left the Frontier Jamboree without hesitation to take a partnership offered to me by Howard "Zarlington" Evans, original member of Grand Ole Opry "Black Face" comedy team "Jam Up and Honey" and moved to Corsicana,Texas! I am dissapointed that the legacy of "Black Face" comedy has all but disappeared from our history books, the internet etc.! A wonderful art form erased from history with the stroke of a pen! Makes you wonder what else could have been erased from history so easily! Ask me about "The Medicine Show." I was in my early twenties and Howard was seventy five years old during our partnership. Quite the education! I learned a lot about show business from Howard and even more about life! I was the "Straight Man" in our comedy duo we called "Doc and The Kid" Howard became my father in abstentia! Howard's background in show business included Vaudeville, Black Face, Burlesque, Rep Shows, Big Pants, Clown, Medicine Show and Circus! The "Single-Most Interesting" individual I ever met, in all my life, to this point, no exception was my former partner "Howard Zarlington"! It was through of my association with "Howard" that I developed the courage to go into business for myself.

I was promoting our show in Paris, Texas and delivering tickets to a local business there called "Watson Body Shop" when a man covered in body dust asked me who I was, "the promoter" he suggested. I said yes, are you Gene, I asked, he said yes, let me give you my card, we might be doing business one day, I said ok, as I took the money for the tickets! Well we did a lot of business after he had a string of number one hits that began with the country classic "Love In The Hot Afternoon", followed by "Paper Rosie" and the country mega smash "Farewell Party". That first encounter I had with Gene Watson was the inspritation for me to establish "Music City Attractions" Talent Agency in 1975. I booked and promoted concert events for the next thirty years featuring the "All-Time Greats" of Country Music that include David Houston "Almost Persuaded" ,B J Thomas " Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, ( Theme song to Acadamy Award Winning Motion Picture 'Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid' staring Paul Newman) New Looks From An Old Lover Again, Hooked On A Feelin'", Bill Anderson "The Tip Of My Fingers", Grandpa Jones "Hee-Haw", Jerry Reed "Smokey and The Bandit, Amos Moses, She Got The Goldmine I Got The Shaft", Ricky Skaggs "Highway Forty Blues, Country Boy," Daryle Singletary "The Note, Too much Fun, I Let Her Lie" , Moe Bandy "Bandy The Rodeo Clown , Americana", John Anderson "Black Sheep Of The Family, Swinging, Seminole Wind", Pam Tillis "Queen of Denial, Maby It Was Memphis" Johnny Rodriguez "Ridin'My Thumb To Mexico, That's The Way Love Goes", Jack Greene "Statue of a Fool, There Goes My Everything", Faron Young "Hell-o Walls, Four In The Morning", Johnny Paycheck "Take This Job and Shove It, Slide Off These Satin Sheets", Porter Wagoner "The man Dolly Parton wrote "I will Always Love You" about, Little Jimmy Dickens "Take An Old Cold Tater And Wait", Gene Watson "Farewell Party", which will be performed at my next wedding, Johnny Lee "Lookin' For Love In All The Wrong Places", Connie Smith "Once A Day", William Lee Golden "Oak Ridge Boys", John Conlee "Rose Colored Glasses and Miss Emily's Picture", Stonewall Jackson "Waterloo", Charlie Louvin "See The Big Man Cry", Tommy Cash "Six White Horses, If This Is Love",and yes he's Johnny Cash's brother, The Whites "Doin' It By The Book, Keep On The Sunny Side (Played as part of the soundtrack of Oh Brother Where Art Thou" and Melba Montgomery "No Charge" which is to be played at the birth of all of my children,(if I find a suitable bride who wants to bear my heirs) in honor of their mother, and at least once on their birthday while standing at attention, saluting, plus a host of top name legendary entertainerse! In February 1994 we organized the Grand Ole Opry concert event for the "1994 Winter Olympic Games" in Lillehammer, Norway and appeared with Johnny Russell "Writer of The Beatles White Album "Act Naturally", Connie Smith (The Hurtin's All Over, Once A Day, Cincinatti Ohio), Jimmy C Newman (The Alligator Man), Skeeter Davis (The End Of The World), and Leo Jackson (Jim Reeves' former guitarist). Oh and "Grand Ole Opry" announcer Haril Hensley. Who could forget Haril? Oh, and Norweigan Country artist Arne Benoni. These represent only a few of a plethora of exciting moments I have experienced in my continuing career! I must tell them and the "Rest of the Story" to every country music fan on the face of Gods' green Earth, that has time to listen! Look for the "Full Version" in my auto-biography entitled "Sold Out Doc" when it becomes available on the internet shelves. As "The New Country Music Sensation" "Steve Oliver," the "Greatest Country Music Voice" I have ever heard, rises to the office of "President and CEO" at Music City Attractions and as the singlemost important re-occuring name in my career, "Gibson" re-emerges , embodied in our new "Senior Vice-President", "Sarah E Gibson", I remain vigilant, as it is being decided how far the tourch of Music City Attractions will be carried! I wasn't old enough to read back when my mother took me to that first concert I mentioned earlier, but if I could have read back then, I'll bet the name on the peghead of that five-string banjo would have said "Gibson"! A mere simple deduction my friend! To be continued!