The Story of Big Jim
Big Jim Whitley-his true life story in modern, PowerPoint bullets
Big Jim was born at a not unremarkable age in Oakboro, NC. As were many banjo pickers he was born naked. That explains a lot.
His was an idyllic childhood in Oakboro, reading voraciously and eating a great variety of dead animals and plants.
Big Jim’s grandpa played the banjo with a two-finger style. Big Jim still has his grandpa’s banjo and it makes noises sometimes when he has had a nip or two of homemade peach brandy.
Moving to the big city of Charlotte when he was thirteen was a great culture shock to Big Jim. The first person he met was Darrell Gray, the pubescent Ditch Wizard, who was from Michigan up North. They had great language difficulties but became best friends.
Big Jim met Big Mark when Big Mark came over to Big Jim’s house because he had heard that the new, fat kid had a real banjo. Big Mark had gotten a plastic banjo/uke for Christmas and he thought he would cheat Big Jim out of his real banjo. But it weren’t much of a banjo and they just became friends instead.
So, throughout their teenage years Big Jim, Big Mark, and Darrell (Ditch Wizard in training) picked music all the time, ate Big Jim’s mama’s fried chicken, and looked forward to the day when they would meet Big Thom (like in the dream). This accounts for their arrested social and emotional development.
Well, Big Jim went and got himself a full scholarship to Wake Forest University. He took his $29.95 Harmony banjo and hitch-hiked to Winston-Salem. There he met Big Thom, WFU’s first “long-haired hippie guitar picker”. Big Jim’s idea of a liberal education soon changed and his GPA at the end of the year was 0.13. They didn’t renew his scholarship.
Pretty soon the nascent CHR was pickin’ and carryin’ on around Winston-Salem, staying one step ahead of the music police.
And the rest is band history, as Big Jim gave up his egoistic self-image of BanjoMan and surrendered himself to the greater uni-soulness of The Chicken, Chicken Hot Rod.