“When Rory was trying to express himself to my parents, as to what he wanted, they were very confused. You have to learn the piano first and then you can learn the guitar.’ They didn’t see it as proper instrument, you know? Guitars were a rarity. I do remember him, once he got a wooden guitar for the first time, taking it over to the School Of Music in Cork and asking if they’d give him lessons. Was Rory learning primarily by ear, from records, or was there anybody locally who taught him how to play blues guitar? "So he’d sort of taken blues on as his adopted music.” I suppose he saw parallels with the traditional music in Ireland and, coming from the background that we were coming from, there was a growing civil rights movement as well. He’d go in and grab books out on the blues at the library there. Then we moved from Derry down to Cork City. “These were the initial places that Rory fed off for the blues. They’d do their little skiffle set in the hour. Once a week, you’d got the Chris Barber jazz and blues show, and he would introduce guys like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee as guests on the show and, of course, Lonnie Donegan. There was also a parallel to that on the BBC, which was the World Service. I can’t be specific as to who the blues players were, but I guess it would be very early Muddy Waters and stuff like that. “But during that program they would also introduce some blues music. The Jazz Hour.’ It was so trippy and abstract that I’d run out of the room, but Rory would listen to the jazz. I mean, it used to freak me out because of the introduction to it, you know? The big deep, baritone voice was like the Devil coming through the radio saying, ‘This is the Voice of America. “He’d somehow gotten the schedule of the programs, because I remember he’d tune in for the Jazz Hour. It was really only when The Dubliners came along that a guitar was seen with a folk band in Ireland When my folks would go round to visit the neighbours - because it was one of those sorts of streets - Rory would get out the radio and dial up the station. Sometimes the radio was almost on without it being switched on. “They had built a massive antenna to transmit AFN radio and, basically, the early radios couldn’t keep out the signal. That was their base for Europe, which had been through the Second World War, and the Americans had lingered on because of the Cold War. That was just post-war, and the Port of Derry had been given over to the American navy. We were in the Bogside, which was where my father came from. “I remember it as being when we were living in Derry, in the north of Ireland. When did Rory first show an interest in blues guitar?
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