one of his breaks and said “Yeah, I play guitar and sing, but I just do country music man. I wish I could play like you do, man. I really like the way you play.” Steve said, “Hey, man. Don’t ever try to be like anybody else. Just do what you do, and do the best you can do. Never try to be somebody else.” This friend of ours dad owned an
American Legion Hall, and Steve’s band, I think they were called Man Alive at the time, they practiced in the big room and my group practiced in the smaller room. Sometimes they’d be getting done about the time we’d be getting started or something. I had a record player back there, and I kept trying to figure out that Edgar Winter song “Keep Playing That Rock and Roll.” You know how the gui- tar lick goes in that. (vocalizes the guitar lick) So I said, Steve, man I’m trying to learn this song by Edgar Winter, I said, but the guitar playing is so fast I just can’t pick it out. Can you help me? So he sits down and in about five minutes he’s got it, you know. So he shows it to me real slow. And then we play it a little faster, and a little faster, until I learned the song. And sometimes I’d go over to his house,
just show up at about 8-o’clock at night, unannounced. He’d be sitting in the living room watching TV with his wife. I’d say ‘Steve, would you show me a few guitar licks?’ He’d say ‘Sure Ace, c’mon in.’ We’d get back to the bedroom and sit down on the bed with- out plugging our guitars in. He’s say ‘What do you want to know, Ace?’ I’d say, ‘I don’t know, just show me some blues licks. Because I ob- viously can’t play worth a damn. So he’d sit and show me things for thirty minutes to an hour. I’d go over once or twice a week and we’d do that. I was a couple of years younger than him. He was just a real giving person. A few years later he’d be playing in clubs and he’d invite me up to play. He’d see me walk in and invite me up to sing and play. He wasn’t one of those guitar players with hot licks that turn around when they play ‘em so the guitar
players couldn’t see what he was doing. He was a good guy. He’s help anybody.
When Steve joined Lynyrd Skynyrd, didn’t you join his band as a replace- ment? Yeah. I had just moved down from Macon, Georgia back to Oklahoma and I was playing in my brother in law’s band. Cassie got him an audition in Kansas City at a concert. He auditioned for ‘em, and they said “ Well, we’ve got Wes Montgomery, and somebody like Jeff Beck that also wanted the gig.” But they told him they would let him know fol- lowing the tour in two months. As soon as he got back from Kansas City, he called me and said “Ace, I think I’m gonna get this gig with Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I’ve just moved my key- board player and my bass player from Detroit down here. We’ve been playing to eat and pay the rent, and I want you to join my band. Then if I do get this gig, them guys can keep on eating and paying their bills. So I started playing with the group, mainly playing rhythm guitar, and maybe I’d sing a few. We were kind of preparing in the event that Steve left, which obviously happened.
You spent some years living in Macon, right around the time a lot of things
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