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Autobiography  205 A BOY AND HIS HORN When my parents were working out of town, I always stayed with my grandparents, Nannie and Papa—Jessie and John Benedict . Papa was a janitor for the Humble Oil Company district offices, and I would follow him around and help out, mostly running errands. One of these times that I was staying in Humbletown, we had a visitor on a Saturday afternoon. He was a friend of Papa’s, but this day he wanted to see me. I followed him out to his truck and saw that he had a little puppy he wanted to give me. I had never had a dog before and had always wanted one. After I heard the requirements for owning a dog, I agreed to them all. Before leaving, our guest said he had something else for me. I had seen this shiny object in the car seat and wondered what the thing was. He said it was a cornet. He took it out of the car, held it in his hands, and put it to his lips and blew. A beautiful sound came out. I asked him to do it again and this time he played a song. At that moment I knew I must learn to make these same beautiful sounds. He handed the cornet to me, and I gently held the cornet the same way he had, placed it against my lips and blew. It sounded different from the sound my grandfather’s friend played, but in that instant I became a cornet player. To this day I have never changed my embouchure. I played the horn on and off all day, every day. Harsh sounds became decent sounds. I could play high notes and low notes and a few in between. (Does this ring a bell?) The only music I ever heard was church music, and it wasn’t long until I could pick out some hymn tunes. Nannie saw how interested I was in blowing on the cornet and said she wanted the local band director, Mr. G. C. Collum, to hear me. Arrangements were 206 Inside John Haynie’s Studio made for me to take lessons at ten cents per lesson. In an old hymn book he would write numbers under each note to indicate which valve or valves to push down to play the note. It was not necessary at this point to give each note a name. Back in these days there was no air conditioning, so everyone sat outside in the evenings waiting for the house to cool off a few degrees. Hoping someone would listen, I would play my cornet. I could pick out several hymns, and others would sing along with me. Mother’s next door friend asked if I would play at her church in the community across the railroad tracks. “Of course he will be glad to play,” said my mother. And so it happened that I played my first concert in the black church in Cisco, Texas. I remember that one of the hymns I played was In the Sweet By and By. In 1934 or 1935, Mr. Collum left Cisco to become the Eastland , Texas, band director. At the same time, Robert Maddox, the band director in Ranger, Texas, became the director at Cisco. Mr. Maddox was a remarkable band director and teacher. He did not do a lot of talking; rather, he led by example. In 1936, the Cisco band received a first division rating in spite of our lessthan -standard instrumentation. The band had no French horns, no oboe, and no bassoon. This was a great beginning for the Cisco band, and under the direction of Robert Maddox, it had an excellent future. But when I was fourteen, Mr. Maddox announced his resignation as Cisco band director to become the band director in Mexia, Texas. At Mexia Mr. Maddox encountered an unusual situation for band directors. J. K. Hughes, one of the oil barons of Texas, was the self-appointed benefactor of the Mexia Black Cat Band. Mr. Maddox would have no equipment shortages and would at last have a complete band instrumentation of his choice. Each year Mr. Hughes would supply the band with what- Autobiography  207 ever was needed, and each fall he would take the band to Dallas for a day at the State Fair. Mr. Hughes took special pride in having the band parade into a large bank in downtown Dallas, form a circle, play a...

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