I grew up in a musical family. My mom and dad started performing long before us kids came along. My mom was a great piano player — she was known then as the “queen of boogie woogie”. My dad sang, played guitar, and emceed the show. My brother was our bass player and later our comedian, known as Gilly Gillumwater. When I was eight years old, we started singing gospel music around the Kansas City area. The title song of our second album Jesus You’re The Man For The Hour went #1 in the Kansas City market for fourteen months and hit the Top 15 nation-wide.

It all got to the point to where we were traveling a lot, getting back in town on Monday mornings just in time for us kids to go to school and my folks to go to work. When I was fourteen we sold our house, put our stuff in storage, and loaded the rest of it on our bus to hit the road and tour. In August 1975, we went to South Carolina and Georgia to play school assemblies. I had two weeks to learn how to play the drums, so all the way to South Carolina I sat in the back of the bus and practiced.

Two weeks later we did our first school; and yes, I was on the drums. (I’m glad there are no tapes of that.) We did that for two-and-a-half years; then, we started playing show clubs and state and county fairs. We also did two U.S.O. tours — one in Alaska and one in Greenland. We worked with just about every star in the country and gospel music business.

In 1980, we came off the road. I did a couple of tours after that, but quickly gave it up. I moved back to Kansas City in 1984 and started playing clubs around town, but I hated every minute of it; so when Glen Smith called and asked if I would play on his show I said YES. I couldn’t wait until the season started.

That was ten years ago. My kids grew up at the opry; my son A. J. sometimes comes out and makes me look bad on the drums, and my daughter Lexie worked here for a while as well. In addition, what a crowd of fine folks we have that come out every Saturday night - without y’all it wouldn’t be the same. It’s been a joy to work with Annie and the rest of the ACJ band.