Taz DiGregorio of The Charlie Daniels Band Does First Solo Album

Well, yeah, I had bands of my own and toured with other bands and played in a house band in a place called the Golden Nugget in Worcester, Mass. and backed up Fay Adams and The Drifters and did my own kind of thing. But I learned early on from the Ray Charles experience up until I worked in that black section in Mass. in a black club and there were only three white people, me, the club owner and his son. I learned early on what that was to reach out and touch people from that experience.

When and how did you hook up with Charlie Daniels?

It was 1964 and I was in Orlando Florida staying in a place called The Palomino Motel on Orange Blossom Trail. I was working in a lounge band that did just a variety of music. I sang and we did not use a bass player, I played bass pedals on the organ and the sax player, Jerry Kaskie, was his name, well he got drafted, and then we hired a guitar player and he got drafted. Well, I was out of work for about four or five months and finally I got a job in a place called La Flame that was out near the air force base in Orlando. I worked there with just the drums and organ and I could do a five piece band with drums and organ, playing bass and singing. He came into the club as the main attraction one night and I was playing the breaks. His guitar player quit and he was playing bass at the time. He went back to playing guitar and the funny thing is when I met the man he said that he was looking for someone to start all over again with a band, and he said let's have lunch. So we had lunch and he told me that if I would cut off my long hair and beard he would hire me to be in his band. It was very funny. That was 1963 and 1964. I played for a couple of years with him in a band called the Jaguars and I got drafted and he went to Nashville and played with Bob Dylan. We were playing not really writing and trying to figure out how to do

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