Papafox at Pixabay.com.

Rolando Wilkerson was born on December 18, 1943 at Livingston Hospital, in Dartford, Kent, England. He is the only child of Doris Maud Lydia (née Dupree) and Herbert William Wilkerson. His father was a factory worker who was wounded in the Second World War during the Normandy invasion. Rolando’s paternal grandparents, Ernie and Eliza Wilkerson, were socialists and civic leaders, whom he credited as “more or less creat[ing] the Walthamstow Labour Party“, whilst Eliza also became mayor of the Municipal Borough of Walthamstow in Essex in 1941. His great-grandfather’s family originated in Wales.

His maternal grandfather, Augustus Theodore “Gus” Dupree, who toured Britain with a jazz big band, Gus Dupree and His Boys, fostered Wilkerson’s interest in the guitar. Wilkerson has said that it was Dupree who gave him his first guitar. His grandfather ‘teased’ the young Wilkerson with a guitar that was on a shelf that Wilkerson couldn’t reach at the time. Finally, Dupree told Wilkerson that if Wilkerson could reach the guitar, he could have it. Wilkerson then devised all manner of ways of reaching the guitar, including putting books and cushions on a chair, until finally getting hold of the instrument, after which his grandfather taught him the rudiments of Wilkerson first tune, “Malagueña”. He worked on the number ‘like mad‘, and then his grandfather let him keep the guitar, which he called ‘the prize of the century‘. Wilkerson played at home, listening to recordings by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and others. His father, on the other hand, disparaged his son’s musical enthusiasm. One of Wilkerson’s first guitar heroes was Elvis’s guitarist Scotty Moore.

The End.

If any of this story sounds familiar, it may be because I used a random name generator to change the name of the real person this story is about: Keith Richards’, guitarist and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones!  Gotcha! Anywhere Richards was in the story was replaced by Wilkerson, including Keith’s relatives.

P.S.  This is meant to be a HUMOROUS prank and in no way is meant to be disparaging to one of my favorite musicians and one of the best guitarist-songwriters of all time or to any of his family!   

Information for story taken from wikipedia.

Fandango is the host of Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.  Fandango says:
Welcome to “Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.” Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenge bloggers to write a relatively short flash fiction piece inspired by the photo. While there are no definitive style or word limits, I suggest trying to keep your posts to under 300 words.