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MY STORY WITH JOHNNY CASH WHO WAS THE RECORD MAN? When I was about 4 years old, a friend of my mother's gave her one of Johnny Cash's first record Albums. Mom played it while I was tucked away in bed. At such an impressionable age as well as being in the dream state of mind, the songs I heard became a huge part of me. Although I was too young to know what the words meant or who Johnny Cash was, I was comforted by the man on my mommy's record player... "the record man." Many years later, Johnny Cash had a television show and I remember how I sat right in front of the TV for a "front row seat". I liked him so much and wished that I would meet him some day. My childhood fondness for Johnny Cash never faded. A CHILDHOOD DREAM COME TRUE My childhood dream of meeting Johnny Cash came true. When I was employed by the National Park Service as the Manager of the Morgan Horse Ranch, I became friends with one of the volunteers named Marilyn Moss. One day I told her that Johnny Cash was my idol and I was planning to go see him in concert up in Quincy, California. My jaw dropped when she said she had been to Johnny's house while she was dating Johnny's piano player, Earl Poole Ball. I was very excited when she agreed to join me on the trip and that we'd get to meet everyone. Wow! I was beaming! However, at the last minute Marilyn had to cancel so I went alone. She called Earl and set things up for me. I met up with him at the Hotel where the Johnny Cash gang was staying. I knocked on Earl's door and he greeted me with his arms wide open like a long lost friend. He smiled and said, Hello, I'm Earl" and gave me a big hug. We hung out back stage at the out door concert. I got to meet Johnny Cash and the Carter Family and even ate Johnny's home made chili. And if that wasn't enough, Earl, such a wonderful person and a great musician became an admirable friend. We had some meaningful times together. I loved the way he talked with his southern drawl and how he treated me like a lady. I ended up going to several shows with Earl. I loved to listen to him play piano so effortlessly (go to www.earlpooleball.com).
ALONE IN THE DARK WITH JOHNNY CASH At a Johnny Cash show in Missouri I was standing back stage in the dark shadows of the curtains while watching the Carter Family perform. I could also see the gray-haired audience. I have nothing against gray hair; I had a full head of it at age 30. I just wondered why there were not more young and middle-aged people at the shows. As I reminisced and remembered when I sat right in front of the TV to watch Johnny's show, I couldn't help but feel blessed with the realization that I was now right in the thick of it all. My thoughts were wonderfully interrupted by the big dark shadow of a man walking toward me. Although I had already met Johnny and spoke with him a few times, I felt completely shy being alone with him in the dark! I don't even remember what we said to each other, but let me tell you, Johnny was just as great in person as he was on stage. Later on, Earl told me that Johnny Cash called me a "quality person". Words could not describe how good I felt. JOHNNY CASH'S NUMBER ONE HIT VIDEO ON MTV! (Did I have anything to do with it?) At one of the shows during my stay in Branson Missouri, I asked Earl if he would be so kind as to ask Johnny if he could sing an old folk song called "Delia's gone". Earl returned to me and said that Johnny could not do it because he forgot the words. That was understandable because that particular song was recorded by Johnny forty years earlier. Three months after my return home from Branson, my producer engineer Gary Potterton asked me if I saw Johnny's new number one video hit on MTV. I said, "No, what is the song?" He said, "Delia's Gone". I was stunned to say the least. When I was finally able to see the video and hear the song, it had some new lyrics. I guess Johnny really did forget the words when I asked him to sing it in Branson. However, the new version was quite a bit better and a little on the, shall we say, "dark side". Did I put a bug in Johnny's ear to record that song which landed him a number one hit? Wow! I may never know. Only he knows.
WHERE DID THE GRAY-HAIRED AUDIENCE GO? After the number one hit with Delia's Gone on MTV, I went to see Johnny cash at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Where did the gray-haired audience go? It was a different crowd altogether. They were virtually all from my generation. The songs Johnny Cash had recently recorded with "American Recordings" (including "Delia's Gone") opened up a completely new genre for him. I day dreamed a little during the show and remembered when kids my age would tease me for liking Johnny Cash instead of Rock and Roll stars. I looked at the audience and said to myself, "See? I told ya so!" THERE IS MUSIC IN MY BLOOD My mother Eleanor Muzinich was once a professional singer known as "Linda Kuhne". Does anyone remember the jingle, "Do you know the muffler man?" That was one of the commercials they sang during their live TV and radio shows. At one of her singing performances at Hammy's Chuck Wagon in San Rafael, California, a man walked in and saw my mom in a mini skirt. He liked her legs. His name was "Moose". To make a special story short, they got married and had two daughters, my older sister Melanie and me Gina. Since mom was busy raising us kids, she could no longer perform, but that didn't stop her love of music and her singing to us kids. Her old songs and love of music helped inspire me to become a singer. It must have sparked something in my sister Melanie as well because she also became a singer for a while. My mother's parents were musicians as well. Her mother, Clara, played the mandolin and the piano. Mom's father, Carl, played the guitar. In fact he gave me his old acoustic Gibson guitar before he died. I wrote a song about him called "Grandpa's Guitar" which is on my "Ride the Wind" album (you can hear a segment of the song on this website). The song tells about grandpa's journey down the rivers in Europe in a paddle boat with his band members, stopping in different towns and cities along the way to play music for the people in trade for meals and a place to spend the night. Grandpa said those two years were the best two years of his 97 years of life. WHERE I WAS RAISED I grew up in a very unique area in Marin County, California. My father, Melvin John Muzinich, also known as Moose, worked for the MMWD (Marin Municipal Water District). This area consisted of 22 thousand acres and six lakes. We lived in the lake keeper's house at Phoenix Lake for 27 years, and my dad worked for the water shed for 45 years. He practically ran the entire place single-handedly. He was the deputy sheriff, the historian, the game warden, the coroner, the dog catcher, the tree faller, the dam builder, the carpenter, the plumber, the bull dozer operator, you name it. Right outside the front door was the lake, Mt. Tamalpais, and Mt. Baldy. We had many animals, both wild and domestic such as horses, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks rabbits, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, turkeys, pheasant, quail, owls, deer, raccoons, fox, badgers, mice, squirrels, . . . and there was a log cabin (still standing) that my parents held family parties in for Thanksgiving, Easter, etc. Sometimes I'd go find the padlock key to the cabin door and go inside and enjoy the quietness or sweep the floors. I just loved it in there. I was a lucky kid. I STARTED MY SINGING CAREER IN THE LOG CABIN Before starting my band in this historic log cabin, I first got some experience being a back up singer in a San Francisco Salsa band called "T.N.T." originally known as "Alma". Edgar Reyes, who I met in 1976, was the drummer and the leader of this band. I learned a lot about being a musician and learned to love it. It made me want to start my own band after Eddy and I broke up. My new boyfriend, Sergio Monsanto and I started a country band called "Gina Gaye and the Rangers". We rehearsed in the old log cabin which, back then was 150 years old. This cabin was 100 yards from where I lived. My mom would cook a country dinner for the band. They never forgot it. I didn't know many songs except for Johnny Cash songs, so that's what we played. Later, I sang rockabilly, country, folk, and crossed over into blues and gospel. The band was quite successful.
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