We were children. But we didn't think of ourselves that way when we picked up our guitars. The Rockin' Three consisted of three boys: Finn Watkins played lead guitar. Mackey Watkins played rhythm guitar. And I sang and played rhythm guitar. Finn was about twelve. I was about ten. Mackey was only about nine.
My cousin Jim Ferguson supplied me with a Stella guitar. In a family with so little money, a guitar was something precious. Jim helped put an instrument in my hands, and Harroll and DeFay helped make it possible for me to stand before an audience with it.
Finn and Mackey were the sons of Harroll and DeFay Watkins. The family lived at Pear Valley before moving to Wall and then Big Spring. Harroll taught at Lohn and Wall before becoming a superintendent in Big Spring. His twin brother, Carroll Watkins, bought my grandfather Jesse Henry Marshall’s farm in Pear Valley. Finn and Mackey would eventually travel very different roads. Finn became a land developer in Dallas, and Mackey became a heart surgeon in Denison with his own clinic. But before all of that, we were three boys with guitars.
Harroll and DeFay did much more than help us play music. They lived on a chicken ranch in Pear Valley, where they sold eggs and chickens and did very well. I stayed at their house often while we practiced for our next appearance. They fed me, and they bought suitable clothes for me to wear when we performed. At home I wore Charles’s hand-me-downs, too big in the waist and too short in the legs. Their kindness made a difference to a little boy whose family had so little. I remember them as really good people.
The Music We Played
Elvis Presley was changing everything. We played his early Sun Recordings, and some of the early RCA material. We also played Johnny Cash's Sun Recordings, along with music by other artists of the period. We weren't a dance band. We were an entertainment group. We played talent shows and other programs where three little boys playing the new rock-and-roll music could get people's attention. And apparently we did. We appeared several times in the Brady High School Talent Show, competing in the Junior Division. We won First Place.
For three boys our age, that was something.
The Eden Firemen's Ball
The Rockin’ Three performed at the Eden Firemen’s Ball, probably in 1957 or 1958. The photograph here was taken at that event. The Brady High School chorus also performed. I remember a formal dinner and providing entertainment, rather than people dancing.
Channel 9, Abilene
Then came something even more exciting. We appeared live on Channel 9 television in Abilene. Television itself was still something special in the 1950s. There weren't hundreds of channels, streaming services, or videos that could be watched whenever someone wanted. When you appeared on television, you were performing right then. Live. We appeared live on Channel 9 in Abilene on a Saturday night, probably in 1957 or 1958 as well. Charles Marshall and the Charlie Horses also appeared on Channel 9. For a little boy from a sharecropper's farm near Lohn, Texas, walking into a television studio with a guitar must have seemed a very long way from the cotton fields.
Yet perhaps it wasn't as far as it seemed. The same little communities that produced farmers and ranchers also produced musicians. We learned from older brothers, friends, radio, records, school programs, church, and one another. Nobody sat me down and announced that music was going to become an important part of my life. It simply happened. The Rockin’ Three gave me my first experience of standing before an audience with a guitar. There would be other bands and stages, but those early performances remained special.