Chords for Ronnie Earl Interview 1995

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My _ _ _ _ _ parents had me take piano lessons when I was _ 13, _ but I stopped very soon afterwards
because I didn't like to practice.
_ I didn't like the routine of it, the regimentation
of it.
And I didn't pick up another instrument again until I was almost 20 years old after
seeing Muddy Waters _ play. _
_ I said, well, maybe the guitar is my instrument.
Muddy couldn't
pronounce my last name whenever he'd call me up to sit in. _ _
He'd just kind of rumble,
Ronnie, you know, something.
And _ he said, you know, you should _ get a name or something.
So I thought about it.
And I love Earl Hooker.
He's one of my favorite musicians.
And Earl
King, too, and Earl Monroe, the basketball player.
So I chose Earl.
_ _ _ And it seems to work
pretty good.
_ I worked with Big Walter Horton a lot, the great, great blues harmonica virtuoso.
_ He kind of took me under his wing and we lived together in my apartment, small apartment.
And he was probably the first _ really big name in blues, along with Otis Rush, who helped
me a lot, too. _
And I worked with him. _ _ _ _
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[Em] _ _ [A] _ _ _ That _
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[G] _ _ was a [Em] difficult time in my life [G] in Roomful of Blues.
A wonderful band, [Abm] a [G] good experience.
Thank God I lived through it. _
To be honest, I was _ _ _ _ _ _ really using a lot of drugs back then.
And _ _ I don't know if it's okay to talk about that or not, if it can help somebody. _ _ _
I was,
_ _ you know, using cocaine.
And to help me deal with the rigors of the road, _ a few years after
I left, I finally stopped going on the road for a while and _ stayed home and went for walks
and started working with retarded adults again, which is what I got my degree in, in special
[A] education.
_ _ _ And _ I needed about five years to recover from all of that.
And it's been this
year now that I've started to [Ab] go out [D] again _
[Abm] and play. _ _ _ _ _
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