Early Life
As an orphan, he joined the ranks of St. Mary's Training School for Boys at age six in 1946. The northwest suburban facility changed its name to Maryville Academy three years later. Seven years after arriving at Maryville, Kelly met a 12-year-old female student there named Maxine. She would later become his wife. He also met his musical destiny there.
"They made us take music classes and by the time I was 11, I was on the trumpet," recalls Kelly. "By 13, I was in the Academy Jazz Band."
After four years in the U.S. Air Force Band, Kelly sold insurance and played music on the side, until 1969. At a time when the turbulent 1960s were coming to a close, Joe Kelly's Four-Plus-One Band won an audition to play regularly at the once famous Gaslight Lounge at 13 E. Huron St. in downtown Chicago.
Read more about this topic: Joe Kelly (musician)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)