Home© Copyright 2001 by David B. Melton All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER 1
My Earliest Recollections of Musical Influence
I was born in 1952. November 29th to be exact. Truman was president. My Dad was in the Air Force. My mother tells me I was named after a famous actor of the time, David Bruce. That was my first taste of showbiz.
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I was born in Orlando and raised in Winter Garden, Florida, moving away and returning several different times throughout my life. My grandparents were firmly ensconced there and I returned frequently as I was growing up. It was a small town then with a population of about 1,000, give or take a few. It’s primary business was oranges. There were several industrial plants in town that gave livelihood to the local population. Some of my ancestors worked there, as did I for a while in my late teens.
When I was about five or six, I used to stay at a nursery after kindergarten or first grade. The nursery had a tall fence around the play yard where I would spend my afternoons with several other children as well as the daughters and sons of the lady who ran the nursery. It wasn’t a house. It was a trailer, which had a limited lifespan in hurricane-prone Florida.
One of the daughters was about my age and I immediately took a liking to her, although I don’t know why. I was five or six. So was she. Her name was Melanie and I somehow confused it with "melody," thinking her name was like a song. We used to play on the porch everyday and I found that I very much liked going there after school.
One day, we were sitting on the porch swing, and I noticed there was a guitar leaning against the wall of the trailer. It had a braided string for a strap to go over the shoulder and I thought this would be a nice time to try impressing Melanie.
"Would you like me to sing you a song?" I asked. I’m positive just the mere question must have impressed her into speechlessness because she just stared at me. I got off the swing and swaggered over to the guitar, spend a minute or two trying to figure out how the doggone string/strap thing worked and finally got the guitar to hang in some semblance of correct. My left hand deftly held the neck up so it would clunk on the porch. I must have looked like a five-year-old Gene Autry or Roy Rogers. Keep in mind, this is probably 1957 or 58. I didn’t know Elvis from Eisenhower (even though I new Ike was president at the time). Anyway, here I stand in front of this girl that I wanted to impress. I hit the guitar strings with a powerful stroke.
"Whang!" reported the guitar.
I stood there for a second in awe. Did I do that? I didn’t know it at the time, but my first chord on the guitar was an e minor seventh with and added fourth, the same chord they use to play real slow during dramatic scenes on "Rawhide." I don’t know who played it for the show, but thank you for giving it credibility.
Melanie was starry-eyed. I had her in the palm of my five-year-old hand. I immediately launched into a song, all in the key of e minor seventh with an added fourth, and made up the words as I went along. I don’t remember any of the words, but they were a total profession of my affection for Melody, err, Melanie.
I don’t know how long I played, but I remember that I was transported when I was singing and playing. I was in a world all my own that people could only look into. They couldn’t touch it. They couldn’t take it away. They could only enjoy it.
That’s when I fell in love with music.