It's a long story, pull up a chair...
In the 1960's, when I was but a boy, we had a neighbor, Mr. E. He and his wife had seven children and they were country folk. He worked in a mattress factory during the day, at night he was a country singer.
In the summer we would hear his band practicing at night. It was covers of Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, ETC...
Their attic was full of music gear. He had electric guitars, acoustic guitars, an electric bass, an upright bass, a pedal steel, a drum set, mandolins and banjos. None of it was fancy, it was all cheap pawn shop instruments. Mr. E could play at least a little bit on all of it. If one of his band mates didn't show up for practice, he would fill in on whatever instrument that they played.
His oldest son was the same age as my older brother, he was the only one of their children that had an interest in music. Mr. E taught his son and my older brother each their first three chords on guitar. Both of them picked it up like a duck to water. My parents bought my brother a VERY cheap "Hy Lo"acoustic guitar for Christmas. The following year they got him a Teisco Tulip E-210 electric guitar.
My brother is three years older than me. When I turned ten Mr. E started to show me the basics on bass and drums. by that point his son played a bit of guitar, bass and drums. My brother was becoming a pretty good lead guitarist. On nights that Mr. E's band wasn't practicing he would jam with his son, my brother and I. I could play roots and octaves on bass. I was getting a lot better on drums, so usually I was the drummer.
Eventually my parents bought me a cheap Tele Star (Teisco) bass for my birthday from the local 5 & 10. I bought a cheap used amp from Mr. E with money that I made delivering newspapers. Looking back, I don't even think that it was a bass amp. Honestly, I wanted a drum set more, as I seemed to have more natural talent on that instrument. But it was too expensive, too noisy and took up too much room.
So, I played bass.
Then I started working at a local hotel as a busboy/bellhop. I met a guy there that had an old, beat up drum set, he wanted to play bass. We traded!
I played in bands as a drummer for many years, I would pick up a bass on occasion, but I didn't own one for a long, long time.
Fast forward to 2008. I was in a pawn shop in Washington DC buying a snare drum. One of the guys there was hanging a bass on the wall, it caught my eye. It was a Jackson JS-40. I bought it with a hard shell case for $125.
About a week later I suffered a major stroke. It took me a long time to regain use of my right arm and leg, playing drums was part of my therapy. For the time being, bass was forgotten.
A lot of things changed in my life. My wife didn't bother to come to the hospital, so I ended up getting divorced. I had a second, less serious stroke later that year. I ended up retiring from my day job a year later and my new girlfriend and I moved to Pittsburgh where I grew up.
Now that I retired I had a lot of time to devote to music. I was playing drums fairly well again and resumed gigging. Then I got serious about hand percussion and started working as a percussionist.
Around this time I was on youtube and I ran across a beginner bass lesson. Hmm, I have a bass in the attic. I brought the bass downstairs, tuned it up and started fooling around with it. I found that I could do pretty much as much as I could forty years before. More importantly, I was enjoying playing bass. I started taking lessons and found talkbass.
These days I work harder to advance my bass playing than I do my drumming. I also find that it is easier for me to learn now than as a child.
