I was born and raised in Cedar Falls,Iowa.A small town surrounded by cornfields. Novelty songs like Purple People Eater and Battle of New Orleans and teeny bop tunes like Short Shorts were popular on the radio in the early 1950's. Then on a warm summer day in the summer of 1957 I was riding around town with an uncle in his new Ford convertible...top down,radio up when Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock came on like a thunderstorm...I fell in love with rock & Roll...I was nine years old. Then Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jene Pitney and...Ricky Nelson...I bought all of his 45's and sat in front of a crude record player listening to his hits over and over. I guess I liked the soft contrast to the others.

At thirteen I began singing with my brother who played guitar. We performed country songs by Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb for my grandmother's fraternal order of the Royal Neighbors...she paid each of us 50 cents. We would also play occasionally,if coaxed and cajoled, for church functions at the Baptist church that we attended growing up.

In high school I began singing lead vocals in my brother's rock & roll cover band and one day sitting in the commons of the University of Iowa I heard Bob Dylan's She Belongs To Me on the jukebox. I've been a big fan ever since. I left Iowa in 1968 for Portland,Oregon where I heard country blues for the first time...the record was The Mississippi Blues 1927-1940 on the OJL label... I was hooked! I bought as many country blues lp's as I could afford and sat in front of another record player struggling to learn the songs off those scratchy 78 rpm reissues. I count the great singers and guitar players on those records as tremendous influences on my music.

Al Rivers