“SPIDERS AND SNAKES” & JIM STAFFORD
“If you don’t know it – practice, practice, practice. That’s what I did when I was a kid. All the other boys would be out practicing football, but I practiced the guitar, and I’m glad I did because it paid off… I can kick this guitar 60 yards,” Jim Stafford said to a roar of laughter from the audience during an appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In another performance, jokes are peppered between flinger-blurring licks of “Malaguena” and “Flight of the Bumblebee” with giggles and applause in no short supply. A renaissance man, if ever there was one, Stafford is a maestro of hair-raising guitar picking and side-splitting comedy routines. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, he plays fiddle, piano, banjo, organ, and harmonica. However, Stafford’s main instrument remains his trusty guitar. “I was really serious about the guitar,” Stafford said, “and I still am.” His musical career began at his home in Eloise. He can still remember his neighbor and friend Wayne Simmons getting a beautiful red guitar from his brother, who’d brought it back from Germany. The two would play together – Stafford on his dad’s guitar. Wayne Simmons would go on to write the song “Gibson Girl” on the Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed album, Sneakin’ Around. He may have joked around about practicing, but it was something he did religiously. Stafford kept a guitar on hand at Quality Cleaners, the family dry cleaning business, in Eloise, where he worked for his dad. He learned to read music from Jim Carlton’s father, Ben, at their family music store, Carlton Music Center. “I wanted to learn how to read music, and Ben Carlton was a studio musician, a quality musician who came to Florida with a band,” he said. Stafford’s intuition on the guitar and drive to practice earned the admiration of his peers. Even guitar teacher Ben Carlton was in awe of the young musician. Jim Carlton remembered that his dad didn’t particularly have the time or want to teach, but he made an exception for Stafford. “He saw that Jim Stafford was such a talented kid he couldn’t help himself,” Jim Carlton said. “In fact, he didn’t even charge money for the first several lessons.” Stafford was in a few garage bands with other young Polk County musicians of the ‘60s, including several iterations of the Legends. Kids like Gram Parsons and Jim Carlton looked up to Stafford. “He was our avuncular older brother,” said Carlton.
(1974)
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In Calling Me Home author Bob Kealing refers to these Polk County musicians whom Gram “befriended and benefited from” as “a constellation of singers, songwriters, and entertainers on the rise.” The self-effacing Stafford was but one of the stars in that mellifluous constellation of charisma and knack. He reflected on his garage band days, “Sometimes we’d be playing
