Jim's Story:
Jim Boston's efforts as a piano player can be categorized into two stages: A "false start" and a "real start." From the time he turned five years old (in 1960; he was born in Des Moines, IA), Jim grew to love listening to the radio. And it would be his favorite "instrument" for the next sixteen years. In 1964, he started collecting records.
A year later, his "false start" began. By then, Jim was living in Cedar Rapids, IA. The music teacher at Polk School, Betty Debban, had her students go to the piano in threes in a sort of a Suzuki method (except each student used the same fingering). Jim, though, wasn't interested in the 88s...but he went through the motions for the remaining two years he spent in Eastern Iowa.
In 1976, Jim had a change of heart about Bartolomeo Cristofori's invention. By then, Jim was back in Central Iowa...and well into his college years (Iowa State University). He wanted to enter the school's talent show by organizing a rock band...but its members kept dropping out. And so, as a survival tool, Jim called upon the piano- in earnest.
Jim found a church on the edge of the Ames campus that at the time had, in the church basement, an old, beat-up Haddorff upright that featured lion's-head legs and had markings on the middle white keys (one a smiley face!). "I figured," Jim recalls, "why not try and learn some old songs on this piano?"
|
|
