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	Clyde Vollmar (1903-2003) Clyde was born October 8, 1903 and died just 1 month short of his 100th birthday. Clyde was truly a "musician's musician". If I remember correctly, one of Clyde's first instruments was the accordian. He loved his guitars. Later in life I know he leaned toward playing his mandolin and mandola. The instrument he made the most money from was the upright bass. Although a guitarist himself, he once told me "guidarists(that's how he said guitar)...guidarists are a dime a dozen." I can likewise appreciate the value of a good bass player. Early on he figured "if I can tune [stringed instruements], then I can tune a piano." He worked from being a first tuner in a piano factory to becoming the fine tuner, and eventually tuned pianos privately as self-employment. He said "tuning a piano is easy to learn, but the longer you do it the better you get." I have found this to be true. I was also able to benefit from his advice in restoring pianos myself.	I learned a great deal about rag-time structures from his decades of knowledge and hundreds of songs he had memorized. Outstandingly, I recall learning from him: the use of augmented, 9th, and 7th chords; an easy way to find the correct dimished7 chord; a great deal about chromatacism; circling of 7th chords by 4ths.(only a few examples) You can hear examples of some of these by listening to "Run With Me Through The Sunshine" in the FREE MUSIC section. Clyde could play ANY instrument with strings! He taught virtually every instrument found in a typical high school band and then some. If someone came to him for lessons on an instrument that he didn't (yet) play, he would just stay at least one lesson ahead of them. The most valuable lesson I learned from Clyde about the making of music was to listen without predjudice. I particularly recall that he was fond of Led Zeppelin songs I played for him on my guitar. Although a big fan of Lawrence Welk, once while we were playing guitars I stepped on my distortion pedal and started playing like I really play. He looked up at me over the rim of his glasses and exclaimed "Now your cookin' with gas!"