Like Battle Creek Knives, I grew up in LA, was a working musician, and also worked as a key grip in the theater circuit, and I spent a lot of time in Hollywood either playing or going to clubs or riding our scooters around trying to draw attention (I've built a couple of real neck-breakers
). Been rubbin' elbows with famous people since I was a baby boy. My late uncle was named Jon Gnagy, and he was the first television art instructor. His first show beamed from the just-completed antenna atop the Empire State Building in 1946. This was that broadcast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIGMQbF7Ayk&feature=player_embedded
Another uncle, Warren McCollum, was a cast member of the cult favorite,
"Reefer Madness." He was the kid that was speeding through town stoned out of his ever-lovin' mind, and ran over a pedestrian. He was a pretty straight-laced guy, actually rather a recluse and a sufferer of the as-yet undiagnosed malady known as PTSD after he served and did a stint in a Japanese prison camp somewhere in the South Pacific during WWII. In later years, after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, he kind of went through a second adolescence and relived his role as "Jimmy" in Reefer Madness by getting high with my cousin on a regular basis until he died several months later.
I also have another famous uncle named Sam Hinton. Uncle Sam was a very well-renowned folk singer who played with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, amongst other luminaries. If you
click here, you'll go to the first of a 17-part series where he sort of performs, sort of instructs, and definitely imparts a lifetime of learning and living history through music. Listen to him play the harmonica through the introduction. He used his tongue to block and open certain chambers so that there are actually two lines being played simultaneously. Kind of like a bass (or rhythm) line and a melody line. Pure genius.
I started this post out thinking I'd talk about all the Hollywood and musical stars I've met or known throughout my life, but I'm gonna finish up with my favorite cousin, and just keep it all in the family.
My cousin, Mike McCollum, is 8 years older than me and grew up with his dad (Uncle Warren - Reefer Madness) and my mom's sister, Ann, right next door to us in Redondo Beach, CA. Somehow, amidst all the hippies and rock-'n-rollers, Mike became a bonafide country/bluegrass picker. He has competed in finger-pickin' contests against Roy Clark, and though he has never won, he has placed second to him twice. Mike is a writer of stereotypical "Lawd forgive me, I got drunk again last night" kinds of country songs, but his claim to major fame (and by proxy, mine too) was his performances on the Gong Show in I guess the 80s sometime. The song The Mike McCollum Band performed was called
"Down At Greasy Lee's," and tells the true story of the owner of Lee's Cafe at Marine St. and Strand in Manhattan Beach, CA getting drunk one day and pinching an underaged girl's breast with his french-fry tongs, and what happened after that. There was a record made of the song that got some air-play on the Dr. Demento Show on radio too, but I don't have a copy of that recording. You'll have a hard time believing that Mike is a serious musician after watching the linked video, but really, the dude can pick the windings off the bottom strings of a guit-fiddle!
Knife content: When I was six years old my Granny let me walk to the store by myself for the first time. I had my saved-up allowance, like maybe $1.50 or $2.00. She said I could buy anything I wanted, and there on the rack was this cool little two-blade folder for just about exactly what I had on me. Took it home, showed Granny, Granny says, "You can keep it until the first time you cut yourself." Five minutes later it was gone. Never saw it again for the rest of my life, but if you squint and look real hard, you can still see the scar that little bugger left on my middle finger where I closed the blade on it. Hey, my relatives still laugh over that story, so I guess I can call it a "claim to fame!"
Blues
