I have enjoyed reading your blog and catching up with the people I grew up with. Some ,I have the greatest respect for and a few ,I could take or leave -but mostly a veritable who's who of wonderful musicians.
Jay Scott
Hey Robert,I saw the query about Travis Rozzell.
His first name when we were in the same class at Tuscaloosa High (1967) was Horace with Travis being a little used middle name.
By the time we started playing together in "Stache" in the mid to late '70's, he was going by Travis. Stache eventually morphed into "Highway" by the time we were the house band at the Holiday Inn in 1978-79.
Travis was a great all around musician. He sang and played lead. The first guitar that I remember him using was a Gibson Les Paul. It was the classic gold top, that showed green where the finish was worn. That guitar was stolen after a gig at a Troy State Frat house. He then got a custom Strat with Humbucking pickups.
We drifted apart after I left performing music during my music promotion days at the Chukker. Sadly the last time I saw Travis was at his benefit concert at the old train station. Travis died shortly there after from a brain tumor. I will dig up a few pics and send them to you.
HopperInvictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstanc
e
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Love Song
A sonnet
courtesy of http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/106.html
In sixty years I've learned love can't be spoken,
The words that tell it drift deceptively
Like scent of roses heavy in the garden,
Avoiding questions bent on what might be.
You gone, an ocean and a continent between,
Something returns from everything we've seen
To spin a new creation that's been won
Against the pain and grief we've brooded on.
Something wild and strange is happening
As lives untangle, yielding freedom now
From tactical defense and bargaining.
Rather, let's sing again life's song, and so
A new world is begun, and we are part of it
With God - who spins the thread - and everyone.
Robert,
--Thanks for forwarding the info about Travis Rozzelle...
but I'm beginning to think that the uncanny parallel life may be a different Travis Rozzelle...
or there are even more strange things in the mix.
The Travis I knew was supposedly a blood relation to Earl Scruggs
(of Flatt & Scruggs country music fame)--Earl's nephew, to be exact, according to my friend Travis,
who was a lead guitar player and singer.
We met in Selma, Alabama, just shortly after Travis had gotten out
of the U. S. Air Force, in the late Sixties, in a cafe at the foot of the "Edmund Pettis" bridge,
which still had visible blood stains on it from the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
Travis said he had changed his name from Scruggs to Rozzelle,
picking the Rozzelle name out of the air, with Coach Rozzelle as the source,
but with no connection to the coach.
He said he had changed his name when he went into the military to distance himself from his father, he described as an abusive alcoholic.
We played music together in Selma for a very short time,
in a band called "The Societies Future" (coined by Travis),
and then went down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and from there,
Travis went to California for a while, then came back to Mississippi,
and we were in a few other bands, with varying members--
playing a LOT of gigs on military bases and miscellaneous clubs in Mississippi,
Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, over the next few years.
The last guitar I knew Travis to play was a
cherry red Gibson GS Standard solid body guitar,
with the traditional Humbucking pickups.
He liked Gibson Sidewinder strings, in those days.
At that time, he and his wife, Joanne, had one daughter and a son--the daughter by marriage,
and the son by the Grace of God...his child with Joanne.
He loved "Clarence Coldwater Revival" and "Jimini Henderi", as he called them,
as well as Pink Floyd and all the rest...
This info will probably not fit your man,
but you never know what this life unfolds--
there's a new surprise around every corner, it seems.
Thanks for your time!
--Charlie Moore
CM~
Dueling Travis Rozzellezzzzzzzzzzz!!!!
I'll find out where ours is buried and I hope you find yours!
best,
rr