This Christmas marked a very important anniversary in the history of Your Own Personal Genius. Thirty years ago, I received a gift that would change the course of my life forever: a Korean-made Starforce Strat-copy guitar, along with a small Fender practice amp. I got with it a small book of basic blues scales, plus 12-bar and 8-bar blues structures. It was all I needed to start me on an adventure that has lasted three decades and counting. The only things I've been as long as I've been a guitarist are a writer and an Atlanta Braves fan.

Of course, I was a musician before I got my first guitar. Most of you who follow this column know that I played baritone horn and trombone in high school, and majored in euphonium in college. I played a little Jazz trombone before realizing that I'm a far better writer than a musician. But at least I had the foundation for learning the instrument quickly, having been schooled in some of the intricacies of music theory that I could apply to the 6-string. Which meant I could learn the instrument from the ground up without resorting to aping currently popular songs and becoming just another utility-grade guitarist.

There's an old joke about a man who gets his son a guitar as a gift and with it, guitar lessons. The first week, the boy comes home from his lesson and Dad asks him what he learned. "I learned the E-chord." the son says. The next week, the kid comes home and again, Dad asks him what he learned. "I learned the G-chord." The next week, the Dad asks the kid what he learned at his lesson and the kid says, "Oh, I didn't go. I had a gig."

That's almost exactly how it happened to me. Within weeks of acquiring a guitar, I was in a band with several other guys who were also just starting out on their instruments. We called ourselves Primitive Lunchbox, mostly wrote our own songs and did a few covers of Pink Floyd and The Doors songs. The highlight of our time together was playing a well-attended chili festival in the nearby 'big city' of Roanoke. Like most bands, we played some good music and had a lot of fun and that was about it. We each went our several ways and life just sort of happened to us, as it will. Autumn came. People married and died. Lydia did not return.

You would think, being the Dean of American Jazz Humorists?, I would have gravitated towards Jazz as my main form of expression on the instrument, especially since I'd played Our Music on my other instruments (I still submit that Jazz euphonium is a vast, undiscovered territory). But alas, I never did quite have the chops for Jazz. My playing was firmly rooted in the Blues, as is Jazz at its heart, and there was some Jazz influence in my choice of quirky chords and polyphonic rhythms, but at the end of the day, I'll always sound less like