Dicky Neely's Gallery: October 2014

Friday, October 24, 2014

Sailing with a friend...a true story

This picture represents an actual event. I was sailing out in the surf and off shore of Port Aransas, Texas one afternoon many years ago when I had a fabulous encounter with a dolphin. We had crossed paths twice while the dolphin was pursuing some fish near the surface.
The first encounter I had buzzed him(?) and thought it funny.
The second encounter he then buzzed me!
Then he circled around and swam beside me for a long while as we went out to sea. We made eye contact and I spoke in a friendly tone, I didn't want to piss him off! He seemed friendly and once we were far out past the breakers he peeled off and went on his way. It was unforgettable.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Me and Rocky Benton

Today They Laid Old Rocky Down

Monday, May 11, 2009

Today they laid old Rocky down

They put a good man in the ground.

Now Rocky was a wonderful soul

Playing his blues just never got old.

Rocky would pick up his harp and wail

And sing the blues as if he were in jail.

And you knew he was the real thing,

He was blind, black and how he could sing.

Rocky played ‘bout everywhere around.

Folks would come to see him from out of town.

He sang about women, drinkin’ and automobiles

And most anything else that had that blues feel.

Now Rocky wasn’t that old, he was only 57

But if there is such a place he’s in blues heaven.

I bet that the blues angels are havin’ a hell of a jam

And Rocky is out front and really layin it down.

Everybody loved Rocky, he was a great blues man.

He’s left it for us to carry on as well as we can.

But I know some night I will hear a cryin’ blues harp

And it will be Rocky Benton playin’ out in the dark.

He will be singing the blues cause they can’t go away

And I’ll have the blues then like I have ‘em today.

I’ll think about Rocky and the good times we had

And those harmonica blues never made me feel bad!

This is a piece I wrote for Rocky's former manager to use in his promo material.

Rocky's road to the blues began in Silsbee, Texas, about 20 miles South of Beaumont where he was born to hard working parents of moderate means. He was second to the youngest of 6 children, and is no stranger to trouble and pain. As a young child he began to lose his vision and was blind by the age of 6.
He attended the Texas School for the Blind in Austin where he learned to read Braille, started his education, and got his nickname "Rocky". He said one of his teachers called him Rocky "for same strange reason."
His teacher would tell him that he knew someday he would drive by a billboard somewhere which would read in lights "Rocky Benton". The name stuck with him and since then Rocky has had his name in lights on many a marquee.

Music came to play a role in Rocky's life at an early age. He says he grew up listening to his sister's records and was introduced to the harmonica by his uncle who could play only one song. He was fascinated with it and wanted to be able to play. Rocky got his first harmonica at the age of 6 and later learned to play drums and keyboard. At the age of 10, Rocky was performing professionally as a drummer and singer of an Austin Jazz band led by keyboard artist James Polk. "I came up in a day when a kid playing a bar was kind of like an act", Benton says. " Even if I was not the headliner, it seemed I was always somehow the center of attention".

Rocky first played Corpus Christi at the Downbeat club, while attending high school at Austin's School for the Blind. Later, when attending a San Antonio junior college, he met the blues great B.B. King which, he says, deepened his involvement with the blues and created a fervent commitment in him for the world of music.
Rocky's presence on stage is as unique and special as his sound. Wearing his leather belt stamped "R O C K Y ", which holds 12 harmonicas, Rocky sways back and forth and demonstrates why he has gained his well-deserved reputation as one of the finest harmonica players to ever take the stage.
A consummate blues singer, Rocky is the real thing. His audiences love him and there is no one who enjoys rocking the house more.