Confessions of a Blues Nut - Bman's Story

I was first really introduced to the guitar as something other than background blur when I was in jr. high school. Growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I didn't even know anyone who played guitar nor had ever touched one. I knew about football, basketball and baseball....and the Olympics. I'll tell you what happened. I am riding in the family car with my younger brother and my older sister. Dad is driving and although 30 years my senior, dad is cool.He let us play whatever music we wanted on the radio (as long as there wasn't a baseball game on) and I of course only knew the top ten crap that was so popular at the time. Dad would sing along with the songs and make up his own words...just having a good time. My sister, a few years older than I, indicated that we should listen to an AM station...yeah..AM cause they had cooler music. My sister wasn't very outgoing and I doubted her taste in music but her station came on. I remember this "underground" station would play the Animals and the Yardbirds and stuff you would never hear on regular radio. Then it happened. I hear this unworldly music with this ripping guitar and I'm glued to the radio. What is this stuff. I have never heard anything like this. It was Alvin Lee and Ten Years After... SSSH. I was hooked. I not only started to listen to that station but also a very large station that we could pickup that was being broadcast from Chicago. We were a long way from Chicago but it was stronger than the local big city stations and it would weave in and out. Over the next few years I really became interested in the blues and eventually a local station (the big city station) came out with an "underground... meaning album orietnted songs longer than 3 minutes which was absolutely unheard of" station on FM that actually played the likes of Mountain, Savoy Brown,the Yardbirds, Cream. Although not from a very affluent family we exchanged gifts for Christmas and about that time my younger brother buys me the Allman Brothers "Live at the Fillmore". I had heard only a few songs that they would play on the FM station but now I had the real deal. Duane Allman? WOW!! He was influenced by so many artists and he announced who they were right there on the albums. I bit. I started to search every record nook I could find to collect up every guy he talked about. Then did research to find out who else he played with. Then it just exploded. I remember going to National Record Mart and going through their "cut out" bins endlessly in every small town around looking for new stuff. Elmore James, T - Bone Walker, Blind Willie McTell... the cancer grew.