by Peter Twitchell
In 1965 when my dad David died in an accident, I was 15 years old, the only thing I had besides Mom and my brother Tony was the Sears and Roebuck portable battery operated guitar with a 9 volt battery operated speaker in the pick guard, which I desperately learned to play in order to make some money.
I grew up listening to a lot of guitar music in Bethel as a boy and teenager – listening to the Guinness Family boys: Johnny, Stuffer and Bobby; playing instrumental music of the Ventures – Nokie Edwards, Bob Bogle, Don Wilson, and Mel Taylor who played the great instrumentals music from the 40s 50s and 60s forward.
They were on the Dalton record label in Seattle where they produced great instrumental guitar music. I first heard the Guinn boys playing these instrumental hits in 1959 on the Fourth of July at the Bethel Log school grounds pounding out The Venture’s tunes with Johnny and Bobby with fender guitars and Stuffer in his white dress shirt with a black vest, pants and shoes pounding out the tunes on his white drum set.
I was sold. I swore I was going to play guitar like Johnny and Bobby from that moment on in 1959 when I would just nine years old. And this was because in ‘65 at 15 years of age there was no more money coming into our home when my Dad passed on. Mom was a homemaker and a great cook and baker and I was going to be the best guitar player that I could be. I joined every record club that I could find: Capital, Columbia, and the RCA record club of America to get my 12 free albums of long play LPs of the Ventures.
Like I stated I was desperate to earn money to buy my Matanuska-made vanilla ice cream from the Alaska Commercial Company, hahaha.
I picked up my guitar and walked to Jack Hopstad’s house with my guitar in hand and asked him if he had a guitar to which he replied, “Yeah I got one from Sears Roebuck and it’s in the Quonset Hut, I have to go dig it out.”
I said, “I’ll wait.”
Jack found his guitar dusted it off and we walked to my house.
I played records of the Ventures playing instrumental music like “Walk, Don’t Run,” “Mr. Moto,” “Sleep Walk,” “Lullaby of the Leaves,” and the instrumental version of, “Louie Louie.”
We had our little amplifiers with 10 inch speakers fully exposed in a box with a guitar chord input and we plugged in. Having no prior experience playing instrumental music we did the best we could do to tune our guitars. Hahaha.
It’s amazing we tuned our strings without breaking any and came to the sound that we heard on the record. It was pretty close to how it was supposed to sound and we called it good.
We tried to learn “Walk don’t run”. This was an awesome experience but also strange to our ears. After about an hour of trying to learn a song we put our guitars down to have some lunch. We both had fingers and fingertips that were so sore we didn’t touch our guitars for another couple days.
But we were both determined to conquer and learn the songs we were listening to!
Nils Sara told us if we put our fingertips into some vinegar the pain in our fingertips would feel better. Sure enough as time went by our fingertips formed calluses and didn’t hurt anymore. In a week’s time we started practicing four hours a day learning guitar sounds that sounded strange but pleasing to the ears.
Soon Jack and I were playing, “Walk don’t run,” and we never gave up. Before the end of the year we conquered those instrumental songs played by the great Ventures and we emulated their sound. It’s amazing how sharp the ears are when you’re a teenager.
Thus, the name, “The Strange Tones,” was born.
When the Guinn Boys, Bobby and Stuffer went off to college and Johnny left for the service in Vietnam we performed in their stead at the Cowan Hut dances, and it went very well. From villages above and below Bethel people came to Bethel to dance. We made enough to pay the rent of the Cowan Hut to the Municipality in the amount of $20 bucks.
$50 bucks went to the gate keeper which was always a young lady, someone we could trust, and we paid Jack Hopstad, John David, David Kloko, and myself each $250 bucks. The next day I treated my friends to Mom’s (Helen Bautista) Kitchen to a hamburger, fries, and a Coca-Cola.
