Richard Cotten

Richard Cotten and I grew up in the same neighborhood and shared that bond that exists between people who go to grade school together. More than that, we were both chased by Bobby McGriff down the same alley behind Richard's house. After school. Every day. Bobby McGriff was a Shepherdian bully - the name alone puts him in the same league with Scut Farkas.

But Richard and I were like every other kid we knew - we had no concept, then, of what we might do with our lives. Or even later: I remember going to Career Day at Hillsboro and listening to a physician say that it took him twelve years to become a doctor. That one statement saved me from medical school. Richard, one day, came to school with a guitar. After that, I never saw him without it. He practiced playing it during class. I don't know how he got away with that, but that's all he wanted to do.

He went to Vanderbilt, anyway, and took a degree in physics, but had no use for it. He just wanted to play in his band. Bob Dylan once said about himself that he was just a song-and-dance man. Richard would have thought that a very high calling.