All the way from Memphis To Hull Yorkshire-slow down and smell the roses
Walking through this old abandoned Victorian railway at Kiplingcotes, a small and charming hamlet in a very gentle and idyllic East Yorkshire, with grown up wild apple trees that dangle over its public footpaths and ancient cross bridges long forgotten, you can feel the presence of spirit of those who were here long ago.
Pondering along its beauty with the one woman who changed my life forever for the better, one can’t help but realize what a far cry from where I actually came from, one of smog and car exhaust, hustling and bustling every single day through oversized cities compounded by extreme weather of either burning and stifling heated sunshine and high humidity to frigid artic icy conditions.
For 40 years I lived in this environment and now here I am for the last 14 years in a place where none of that harshness exists.
With such a positive change in a person’s life, after spending 20 some odd years on the road gigging and partying in those extremes, how could someone not be impacted in such a wonderful way, that you become overflowing with ideas and ambitions of creativity?
For it is truly places such as these that have recently had a huge impact on how I perceive life and coincidently, how I now approach music both literally and harmonically. So much so, that I have just in the last mere 30 months written and produced over 225 songs. And they keep coming!
I started out as a kid growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, where I was born, within a musically inclined family and around 8 years old, I could always hear my four sisters, a gospel quartet, whom harmonized like angels, practicing their songs with my father, who was an accomplished Chet Atkins/Les Paul style guitarist. Following along in their footsteps, I too began singing and was doing solos in churches. Around 13, I heard Bennie and The Jets on the radio and knew immediately that I wanted to play the piano and be a superstar like Elton John. So, that very year, I began taking piano lessons and promised my father I would stay in that summer after agreeing to his condition of promising to practice before buying a piano. And so it stuck. Now, I have been playing ever since for nearly a half a century!
Later, around my twenties, I began doing some gigging around the night lights of Memphis and the outskirts. From hole-in-the-wall places to very posh top notch formal occasions. It was not long before I found myself on Beale Street gigging with a few bands until I found myself doing solo work. I was received well and so much so, a friend offered me to come out to Los Angles for a go and so go I did.
LA opened my eyes in many ways and also had a huge impact on my writing of stories and style of music, but with me, I brought a taste of the Memphis sound that everyone seemed to latch onto almost right off!
Once in a very huge orange orchard in the middle of a desert town called Fillmore in Ventura County, just north of LA, in rows and rows of beautiful orange trees, and here I was playing a keyboard with my mates as the amplified sound wafted over the valley. They asked me jokingly why you always wear sunglasses? Are you blind? You see, I have always worn them and they are just a part of me!
After, about 2 and half years of bars, parties, weddings, banquets, and birthday party engagements, whilst working as an architectural consultant, a skill I acquired back in Memphis with my father who was a structural engineer, I decided to leave LA and venture out across and up through the Midwest, and along the way gathered more musical experience many moons ago.
Then suddenly I find myself up in Toronto, where I spent about a year or two and then back down to Memphis where I met this young lady from Doncaster UK at an building society products show. That day changed my life forever in the most positive way. After going back and forth to the UK from the US I finally decided to stay here with her.
So, now my beautiful English garden, my beautiful English cat, and my beautiful English wife all live happily ever after here in in Hull, East Yorkshire, UK.
Yes Hull as in my last name Hull. Purely coincidental I assure you! Do happy endings and dreams come true? Yes.
Now, I am feverously working on finishing my biggest project yet. My third album, a 28 track double CD, called “Cherokee Moon” which is a collection of new songs, Americana, gospel, pop, jazz, rock, blues, and orchestral to be released in July 2016. But, by the time this article is published, will be out and I hope you will go and buy it!
Stay the course, believe in yourself, and persevere. Dreams do come true.
Peace and love to all. Jerry Hull
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