The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

ter. They said there was a guy
on one of the nearby side streets,
Shirley Paul Hees, who did
restringing in the area. I went
over and knocked on his door.
He said, “I will call you
when it is ready. When you
come to pick it up, bring the
youngster with ya.”
I picked up dad at work,
picked Al up at school and we
went over to Shirley Paul’s for
the first time. He took us down
in the basement music room, he
got out one of his fiddles and
had Al play a tune. He played
some classical number.”
Shirley said, “That crap
won’t make it around here. He
said, you gotta play the real stuff,
not sissy music.”
Shirley played this real
complicated hoe down, played it
through once. He hands Al the
fiddle, and says let’s see what you
can do. Al played it through
perfect. Shirley said, “Okay,
Wednesday night you come over
here for practice.”
So Al started going over
every Wednesday night for
practice. Of course he didn’t sing
in those days, just played the
fiddle. Then Shirley Paul got
him going on the guitar. And
then the drummer quit. So he
put Al back on the drums. Al
turned out to be the best
doggone drummer in twenty
counties. You can tell a good
drummer by the number of
people that get up and dance.
Shirley put a mike back by
the drums and finally got him
singing. He would just sing the
words at first. I said, Al if you are
going to make it, you have to
make every woman in the room
think you are singing to her, you
can’t just sing words. He sure did
that.
When Al started playing
out in bars, he was only 14. We
had to go up to Jeff City, the
state capitol, to make sure it was
okay. He was mainly playing in
beer gardens. They said as long
as he had a guardian with him it
was okay, but if he ever touched
a drink he was out.
I used to take him to all the
fiddle contests in the area. I
remember when we were in
Springfield, we went to a contest
and all the girls were throwing
their keys at him, he was around
16. His brothers were home
from college and they were
wondering how come Al was
getting all the action.
Al called me when Nancy
first came up to Seattle. He
called me and told me he was
going out with a new girl. He told
me the story of them going out in
college. He says, Mom, I think
this is it. So then he was hanging
around and hanging around and
not getting around to asking her.
I said “Al, get busy kid.”
“He said, I can’t ask her
until I have a ring.
“I said, she doesn’t care
about a ring, she cares about
you.”
~ 63 ~
The Callans and McClarys