Musical Humble Pie 101

I attended the University of Oregon for the last three years of my college career. This was after several transfers and many changes in course of study, so by the time I got to the end, I was pretty much maxed out on my elective credits, as I'm sure you can imagine.

(Side note: The U of O campus is still one of my most favorite places in the whole wide world.)


In either the Winter or the Spring term of my last year of school in 1998, I registered for all of the classes that I needed, but was one credit hour short of being a full-time student. I browsed through the course catalog and found a perfect match. Beginning Blues Guitar. Perfect. My thinking being, "I play guitar, I wouldn't exactly call myself a beginner and I doubt this is going to blow my homework out of the water. If anything, I might be able to teach them a thing or two.


Yeah, think again.

The class was taught by Don Latarski, who's a really stellar guitar player and a heck of a nice guy. He truly puts in the work, as long as you do too. The format of the class was simple. There were about 15 or 20 of us in the class and we all sat in a circle with our acoustic guitars. Don would teach us a riff and we'd all work it into a rhythm until we could all play it simultaneously, at which point Don would take a solo through about 12 bars or so. Then the person to his right would solo for another 12 bars, then the person to his right, and on and on. You get the point. The one that we learned that sticks out in my mind was The T-Bone Shuffle by T-Bone Walker. (If you click the link it'll open a YouTube video in a different window so you can listen while you read. Just for the whole multi-media experience, you know...) I can remember specifically feeling like I had the lick down, getting in synch with the rest of the guys in the class, waiting for my turn and then playing something that sounded like a whoopee cushion getting eaten by a pack of vultures. It was horrible. Just horrible. I sucked really bad, and everyone else there seemed to be really really good. Discouraging, but I didn't give up.

It went like this for the whole 10 week term. Show up, learn the riff, play in a circle, and inevitably embarrass myself in front of the whole room. These guys were a shit ton better than I was. Apparently playing the blues wasn't as easy as I thought, but I did it. I stuck it out and ate shit when it came to my turn and went home and tried to get better for the next week. When the last session of the term came around, Don said, "Well, you know, the funny thing is, I feel like this is a guitar class, and you'll get out of it what you put in, so I don't waste time taking attendance and all that nonsense. The downside of that is that here we are on the last day of class and I don't even know any of your names, so I'm going to read through my class roster and when I get to your name, let me know that it's you and I'll give you credit for the course."

He got through the entire class roster and I was the only person whose name was not called. This is odd, mostly because as a Barker, I'm used to being up towards the top of the list, but also because I know that I specifically registered for this class with plenty of notice, and I haven't gotten any notifications about my student loans being messed up because I'm not registered full-time, so clearly there must be a mistake somewhere.

Don gave a sincere "Hmmm..." and lifted up his class binder to see if any other papers were in it. I instantly noticed the problem when I read the 3x5 card that he had taped to the front of it. "Don, let me interrupt you there," I said. "I think I've got it. You see, I signed up for 'Beginning Blues Guitar.' But you're reading from the class roster for 'EXPERT Blues Guitar."


I had been in the wrong class. All term. For whatever reason, I wrote down the wrong class time and location for my Beginning Blues Guitar course, taught by Don Latarski, and had accidentally been attending Expert Blues Guitar, also taught by Don Latarski.

Don very graciously and humorously gave me credit for my Beginner's course that I had apparently never shown up for, which was news to both him and me. And everyone else in the class gave me a little look of understanding. And I felt kinda dumb and kinda less sucky at the same time.