Oklahoma Voices: Edgar Cruz

Description:

Transcript:

Interviewee: Edgar Cruz

Interviewer: Wendy Gabrielson

Interview Date: October 21, 2009

Interview Location: Undisclosed

Transcribed by: Katie Widmann

Transcription Date: Friday, June 5, 2020 – Monday, June 8, 2020

Filename: edgarcruz-mastered.wav

 

Wendy Gabrielson: My name is Wendy Gabrielson and I am here today interviewing Edgar Cruz for the Oklahoma Voices Oral History Project. Today is October 21 of 2009, and Edgar thank you so much for agreeing to do the interview today.

Edgar Cruz: I’m happy to be here. Thank you very much, Wendy.

WG: You’re welcome. We’re really excited. Edgar, I’m wondering if you could start by telling us when and where you were born.

EC: I was born here in Oklahoma City back in 1962 at Saint Anthony’s Hospital. I’m about as Oklahoma City as you can get, raised here and based here. So even though I travel, it’s only maybe 10-20% of the time out of the city throughout the year at the most. For the most part I’m here all the time.

WG: What areas in the city did you kind of grow up in or live in?

EC: I grew up going to Monroe Elementary back when I was young and then we moved right away. In second grade, I was started at Cleveland over off 23rd near May Avenue. From Cleveland I went to Taft, and Northwest Classen, and even OCU right down the street. So I stayed within that mile for the longest time.

WG: I just have to throw in there that my own children go to Cleveland Elementary.

EC: Is that right?

WG: Uh-huh. That’s my neighborhood. I live right on 20th Street there.

EC: Oh is that right? Beautiful. I loved growing up there.

WG: I really love it too. That’s cool. Tell me then, what were your parents’ names?

EC: Mom was Joanne – Mom is Joanne – and Dad was Manuel Cruz. Manual was a strolling mariachi here in Oklahoma City. He got here and he was 17 years old and helped his uncle establish the first Mexican chain, which back then was called El Charrito, which was bought out by El Chico.

WG: Okay.

EC: So that’s how we kind of got in here through the business. Dad use to help manage the restaurants with his uncle and during his breaks he’d grab his guitar and he’d go serenade table to table. And when I

got old enough as a teenager, I started playing at 14, I used to accompany him on the bass. Not the guitar, but the bass, with Dad. He’d go to this table and there’d be a grandmother, there and he’d play “Over the Rainbow;” and back there there’d be a cowboy, and he’d play “Ghostriders in the Sky;” over here, a teenager and he’d play “Pink Panther Theme;” and back here a little baby, and he’d play “Braum’s Lullaby.” So it’s because of my dad I credit the knowledge of a huge repertoire in my head, familiarizing myself with all the great songs were written, period, and then eventually learning them and eventually recording them and performing them.

WG: Wow. What a neat history. Before your dad started the restaurants and things and you were obviously born here, where did they come from, your parents?

EC: My father came from San Luis Portosi Matehuala in Mexico. Mom was born in Pittsburg, Oklahoma, tiny little town not too far from McAlester. And her parents were also from San Luis Portosi, I think the Matehuala area in Mexico. So my grandparents are from Mexico. That makes me full Mexican.

WG: Excellent. Was the culture then that you grew up in here in Oklahoma City, the people that you hung out with as far as your family, was that all Hispanic culture?

EC: [clears throat] As far as the family goes, yes. It was all Hispanic culture, like on holidays and gatherings. But at home you know, growing up with the Cleveland kids, it was all American. Matter of fact, I didn’t want to speak Spanish because I would have been – I would have stood out. It wasn’t common in my household. Dad wanted us to speak Spanish. But Mom, she spoke mostly English growing up. She does speak Spanish fluently, but because we were raised around American kids I ended up just talking in English all the time. I didn’t study Spanish until I went to high school, and then eventually college, and then I started listening to a little bit more of what Dad said. So right now I can only speak a little bit of Spanish, just enough to understand.

WG: Well, right now the culture at Cleveland, in that neighborhood it’s very, very mixed. You get Black, Asian, Hispanic, white. Was it the same then?

EC: No, no. Back then, when I got to Cleveland I think it was, I was 7 years old in second grade. So it was about 1970, 1969. It was just mostly white and you know I was one. I guess I would have been considered the minority.

WG: Uh-huh.

EC: I never thought of myself that way at all. I never have, never will. But if you were to say that, yeah. There was only a couple of us kids that would have been minority.

WG: Hm. Interesting. So did you like school then?

EC: Oh, I loved elementary school. I grew up there playing with all the kids. I lived off 28th Street, off 28th and Venice, so it took me at least six blocks, long blocks, to get to school. I walked; I walked most of the time. My parents let me learn what it was like to appreciate going from here to there. And of course between here and there, there’s lots of friends, lots of houses, lots of curves, lots of moun – we have hilly streets in that neighborhood. So I loved it. I got to experience it. Because by the time I quit walking I started riding a bike. Then I got to ride my bike up these hills, up and down these hills, and then eventually the car up and down hills. I loved growing up in Cleveland neighborhood.

WG: Nice. Did you have a nickname in school and how’d you get it?

EC: I don’t have a consistent nickname. A lot of kids called me Ed or Eddie or Big Ed or Eddie-gar. My dad called me Mitch because I grew up as Michael in the house. My middle name – Michael. So only my closest family calls me Michael right now, but that’s my dad. [faint metallic crashing sound, possibly a door slamming] He was the only one who called me Mitch. Everyone else in my family these days called me Edgar.

WG: Hm. So you had mentioned that your father was your earliest influence in music. How old were you when you actually picked up a guitar? Was that your first instrument?

EC: The inspiration was, without knowing it. As a little kid there in the house there by Cleveland, which was by the way it was a huge house, about 3,000 square feet and a swimming pool, one of the only swimming pools at the time. It wasn’t one of these modern swimming pools that you guys see with filters and diving boards and self-cleaning. No, this was just a cement pond. You had to clean it out yourself. You had to pour chlorine in there. You had to drain it every two months and fill it back up just to keep it clear. I mean it was a very old-fashioned pool, but it was a huge pool. It had a deep end, an angle and then a shallow.

We grew up in that. I always remember having Christmas parties, and that’s where all of Dad’s family musicians would come over and they’d start singing until the wee hours of the night. When they were singing all these Mexican songs, my dad and his trio, I didn’t care for it because I was listening to classic rock because of my older brothers. My oldest brother Rick, and Rose and Veronica, they all used to buy The Eagles and Led Zepplin, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Beatles. That’s what they listened to and that’s what I liked more. But like I said, every year I’d hear my dad play this Mexican music and so I couldn’t help but be inspired by that. And I really didn’t truly appreciate it until I started studying music in college and all the repertoire. I didn’t start playing guitar. I remember I got my first guitar at age 12; I made a bunch of noise on it and put it in the closet for the next two years. I didn’t take it out until, I remember, it was January 1, 1976. I literally took it out and I haven’t stopped playing it since. That’s when I started getting into the classic rock. I didn’t do a lot of what Dad did, but it didn’t take me long to learn how to play by ear which is how I still play, as well as reading music thanks to college. By playing by ear, I not only I picked up the guitar but I also picked up the bass. And that’s when I started to accompany my father on the guitaro, which is the big Mexican bass, the big, fat guitar you see the mariachis stroll with. That’s where I was. I accompanied my dad on that. It was this underlying influence by my father that I truly wasn’t aware of. I always tell everybody it was classic rock, but no. My dad was way there, long before I really knew it.

WG: I have on here a question you sort of already answered, but what do you remember about the first time you picked up a guitar?

EC: It was an electric guitar. It was a Decca, which back then nobody knew. I think you can get it at Sears or someplace like that, one of those general stores back then. What I remember mostly about it was on most guitars you see now they have knobs that you can turn or switches you can flip. This one had little – I don’t know if you remember the old keyboards on an organ that had flip – it was almost like turning one of those lights that kind of pushes in and then you push the bottom down. This guitar had that to get it to change the tones [unknown faint metallic sound again]. Back then there was no rules and this was just a way of putting little gadgets on guitars, and I thought it was cool. What I remember

most was getting that for my first guitar. Actually, I think I got a cheap one. And then within a year I gave that to my younger brother Mark, who now is one of the greatest guitar players I know. Classical technique. Then Dad got me another one which had a little bit more knobs, so I was a little bit more impressed. Your question, again, I’m sorry, was…?

WG: The first time you actually picked up a guitar and played, your first memory.

EC: Taking that electric guitar and plugging that into that old amplifier and being able to crank it up and do this – now that’s the first memory I have. We had a big enough house that we were on this side of the house and Mom was on the other side of the house so I could pretty well play –

WG: You wouldn’t get in too much trouble?

EC: No. I could crank that thing up. Back then we didn’t have distortion pedals. We just cranked the thing up until it overdrived, you know? That would allow you to get it. You’d get this natural overdrive, which is one of the sweetest rock sounds to date – natural overdrive. That’s what I remember mostly about getting my first guitar.

WG: Excellent. You mentioned that you would play with your father in the restaurant and accompany him. Was there other music that you played with your family or maybe with your brothers?

EC: Well my brother Mark and I, since we got started playing, [hiccups] excuse me, right away, Mark had a couple of years of [unknown sound from above repeats] violin before I ever picked up the guitar. When he picked up the guitar he was not only a head start, but he’s a natural. He picks it up even faster than me. And technically, he had a greater ear. Instead of competing with Mark, I picked up electric bass. I was already playing the guitaro so now I got ahold of an electric bass [unknown faint sound again. Perhaps a door opening and closing in the background]. And I decided I’ll just be the bass player. He can be the guitar player [unknown faint sound repeats]. We’ll get a drummer and we started doing some Rush and Val Halen, Led Zepplin, Kiss, The Eagles – a bunch of stuff that showed him off on electric guitar and that was really fun for me to play on bass guitar. That was one of the ensembles that I did, and then I would also play with Dad and the mariachis at nights. And on weekends, I’d go with Dad and play in the restaurants. And sometimes we’d get private jobs: and we’d get another one or two musicians; and we’d go to the private party; and we’d stroll outside for the guests having a Mexican mariachi or a fiesta. I would just be on the bass. Other than those two, in high school I was in The Chryslers. That was a choir group that Northwest Classen had; they’ve won many awards. But I didn’t sing. I played bass for The Chryslers all through high school, and that’s a little-known-fact by the way. That would be the only other group I could think of.

WG: That’s very cool. Was that you and your brother just playing at home, or you guys were also playing out places, all this great classic rock?

EC: Well, naturally when you start playing this classic rock and you get a band, you have to start rehearsing. There’s rehearsal time, but when you get enough songs then you try to find any place to play. I remember there was a little bar on the Paseo that was called ‘A Sane Asylum.’ Insane asylum [he explains the joke and they share a laugh], and that was my first gig that I remember. It was a bar but we got in there and there was about five people out there. It was my first gig and I think we might have got about $5 each. I don’t know.

WG: It was exciting wasn’t it?

EC: It was very exciting, but what we found was back then was Star & Stripes Park used to be the place to hang out on weekends. It’s this long park and then it goes around this playground, and then it comes back. And of course, on the other side of that playground is the lake. Up and down this parking lot these people not only would do that, but they’d come to the pavilion right there near the playground. In that pavilion was some electrical outlets and they were on. So we thought, “Let’s go.” I think we had heard somebody play there before and we took advantage of it. We went out there, made fliers, told our friends we were going to play out there this weekend. I’ll tell you what. After a couple of times of playing there we started getting these big crowds come out and seeing us, and we would manage to put on free shows for anyone who would come out to Stars & Stripes Park. That’s where we did our whole Led Zepplin live album repertoire. [WG laughs] I don’t know who was singing at the time, Tom Kelly? We had a couple of singers but Tom Kelly was the wildest and still working to this day in a band. I think it’s called Big Daddy. [unknown thud, possibly a door slamming] It’s coming to town. I’m glad to hear he’s still doing what he’s doing and I’m still doing what I’m doing. Mark’s still doing what he’s doing. The drummer had quit playing [unknown metallic crashing sound again]. He’s an architect, I think, right now. Anyway that’s how we started getting our first gigs, at any kind of festival or private party we could possibly round up. It was hard and it was rare, but we did it. We were only 16, you know? 15, 16 years old.

WG: Sure. You’re actually most famous, I would say, for your classical guitar style. How do you define your style, or how would you describe the music that you play?

EC: I am a classically trained guitar player who was raised on classic rock, and strolled Latin with my father. How would you describe that? [both laugh]

WG: That sounds good. I’ll take it.

EC: Rock ‘n’ roll Latin classical guitarist.

WG: Sweet [both laugh].

EC: Now, let me tell you how I got started on classical guitar. I told you I strolled with my father at the restaurants. During breaks, I would grab his guitar and say, “Dad, how did you play that song instrumentally?” I never sang. Dad always sang, but sometimes he would play instrumental versions of a song. And I asked him, “How do you do that?” You’re keeping the bass note. And you’re playing the melody note. And then you’re throwing a little bit of chords in between, and in essence playing solo guitar arrangements. I’d take his guitar on our breaks and I’d try to work out a little bit of “El Paso” by Marty Robbins or my version of “Malagueña” or whatever song. There was a couple of other songs, “Somewhere My Love,” that people requested all of the time. That’s how I started to build up my solo guitar repertoire. Keep in mind I was self-taught. I didn’t take any official lessons until I went to college at Oklahoma City University, which was officially in 1983. So The first seven years I was self-taught, and I had a lot of bad habits. I still do to this day because of that. In ’83 I had to re-learn the correct classical guitar technique, because I had a guitar and I was playing it. There was even a point back in the teen years where, I’ll never forget the night that Dad told me, “Hey next week I’ve got a prior job but they just want me. How would you feel if you stayed at the restaurant and strolled by yourself?” That was one of those push you off the ledge and get you swimming days and choices. I thought, “Well I’ve got

twenty songs memorized. I guess yeah, Dad, I’ll do it. Sure. I get all the money? Okay. And all the tips? Oh Okay.” It was an incentive and I had worked for it. I’ll never forget showing up and putting on my guitar and going to the first table and asking them, “Is there anything you’d like to hear?” This one guy said, “Do you know ‘If I Were A Rich Man’?” It happened to be one of the 20 songs I had memorized, so I played it for him and he gave me a $5 tip. The rest is history. That’s how it all got started [both laugh]. I just started paying attention to what people requested, learned those songs, and that’s how I built my repertoire.

WG: That’s very cool. I had read that aside from classical, and I’m not as musically inclined so forgive me if this is the same thing, but I had read that you do finger style guitar. What is that and how is it different?

EC: Absolutely. I’m glad to tell you. For the longest time whenever you mentioned ‘classical guitarist,’ people had this set mind that he plays classical guitar music, music written for classical guitar. If you call yourself a classical guitarist, even to this day people think, “Oh how boring is that going to be?” Well, that’s the only word we had at the time because I was classically trained. Basically, that means you don’t use a pick. You use the fingernails on your right hand. You use your thumb, index, middle, ring fingers and only the pinkie maybe when you’re strumming. For the most part you’re using these like picks, your fingers like picks, or in other words finger style.

WG: Okay.

EC: The only difference between the word ‘finger style’ and ‘classically trained’ is, if I say now I’m a finger style guitarist, that doesn’t limit you to just playing classical music. It actually opens you up to playing anything. You’re just using your fingers. That doesn’t mean if you’re a classical guitarist you can’t play anything. That’s pretty much what I am. I’m a classical guitarist who plays anything. I always consider myself the Liberace of classical guitar. For those of you who don’t know, Liberace was a classically trained pianist.

WG: Right.

EC: He went out there and not only did Chopin but he did “Chopsticks” and “Warsaw Concerto” and “Tico Tico” and all these popular songs. “Malagueña.” He’d stick in “Somewhere My Love” as well. He started making what classically trained artists can do. They can expand. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn the correct way and then show the world what this classical guitar, or solo guitar, was capable of doing. That’s why I built up a huge repertoire that went every way and not just classical. I covered my dad’s Latin, my rock songs, and the popular songs, jazz, love songs, standards, all that stuff.

WG: Excellent. So the ‘classical,’ then, really is just the training?

EC: The classical is the training. That’s correct. Classical guitarists usually go to college or with a seriously trained guitarist and they study classical guitar. That basically means you’re using your thumb, index, middle, and ring finger on your right hand.

WG: Right.

EC: There are a lot of correct techniques to be used on the left hand. Everything you play, every lick, every hammer on, pull off, passage, note, melody – there’s a right way to finger that on the left hand. Then there’s a right way to play it on the right hand. There’s so many ways of playing these, but being

classically trained you are taught the best way to execute any kind of melody line. When you hear me or see me play something that’s really fast and looks complicated, it’s not. It’s just that I learned my fundamentals and I sped them up. That’s all I’m doing. I’m doing the same fundamentals, the correct ways, and I’m doing them faster.

WG: Out of all these different types of music that you have learned and played, do you have a style or a genre that’s your favorite?

EC: I love Spanish music a whole lot. I love playing music because the nano string is more designed for that kind of music. But I always love seeing the reaction of the audience when they hear me play a classic rock tune on solo guitar and be able to pull off: the bass player, the rhythm guitars, the lead singer, the vocalists, the pianist, all at the same time. I’m always looking for a challenge, something that people say that can’t be done on solo guitar, and prove them wrong.

WG: Like the “Bohemian Rhapsody?”

EC: Like the “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. That’s correct. That song has made me internationally known ever since I pulled it off and stuck it on YouTube. I think it’s got about 9 billion hits now. So it’s doing me well and people’s minds are opening up to what the guitar can do. A little story is back in 1983, when I was just like any other guitar player going this direction, there was one guitar player who took me completely to the right and his name was Kazuhito Yamashita. What Kazuhito Yamashita did was he was transcribing. He would write them out, and perform on six-string guitar, symphonies. Dvorjak’s “Ninth Symphony,” Stravinski’s “Firebird Suite.” He had “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Mazorski. This is a multiple work. He was playing every single song on the six-string guitar instrumentally. And I was so blown away by the that, I bought two recordings, two pieces of music of it, cassettes and CDs of the same piece. I was just so amazed. To this day I’m still amazed at what he did back in 1983. He taught me that the guitar is capable of doing anything. You just have to have the patience, the knowledge, the technique, and the ability to write it out and perform it.

WG: Wow. That’s fascinating, and I hope I don’t have to repeat his name because –

EC: [slowly] Kazuhito Yamashita.

WG: Thank you. [laughs] Do you remember when you were first starting out or when you were first playing, were there certain riffs, or tunes that you just couldn’t get out of your head? Sometimes you get something stuck in your head and you –

EC: Well, what stuck in my head was what was being requested more than anything, and that was “Malagueña,” which was the first and probably to this day still the most requested. I think “Bohemian Rhapsody” is coming up now to be the most because that “Malagueña” generation is kind of fading out. It was those commonly requested songs. “Classical Gas” is huge, “Hotel California”, “Dueling Banjos.” These are songs that I play at all my concerts, by the way, because of the popularity of them. There’s a lot more Latin, a lot more pop, standards, et cetera. These are the ones that stuck in my head and these are the ones I had to learn. I had to do them well.

WG: What about any Oklahoma musicians? Were you ever influenced by anyone aside from your father and your brothers? Any local musicians?

EC: Mason Williams is the composer of “Classical Gas.” Back in 1968 he wrote this instrumental, which is probably the best-selling instrumental of all time, maybe the second best. It’s so close up there. I’ve gotten to meet Mason and play for him and record this. He was probably the biggest as far as that one song goes. Beyond that –

WG: Hoyt Axton? [They’re talking over each other here so this is hard to hear]

EC: The other guys did not influence me. I have always been an individual to study beyond what is just near me. I’ve always looked beyond the state of Oklahoma to the nation and the world. I’m seeing what is out there. I was doing this long before the Internet by any means possible, books, newspaper articles, college. I’ve been inspired and influenced by so many different musicians and so many different genres, just by studying. As far as Oklahoma, Jimmy Webb is another one with “McArthur Park.” I recorded and love that song. I think it’s one of the most fascinating songs ever written. Of course, I played “Oklahoma” from the soundtrack, and I even wrote a song for Oklahoma on my last album, “The Centennial Jig,” a couple of years ago when we had our birthday. My latest album, “Pieces of Edgar,” has a song that I wrote and it was used in a movie “The Grand Ride of the Abernathy Boys.” It was an independent film out of OU. And they used that song for it, so I can say I’m an official soundtrack composer.

WG: I’m going to have to see that. I’m familiar with the Abernathy Boys.

EC: Yeah, it’s a very small independent film, but I got in there and I was very honored.

WG: Was there a point during this musical journey that you’re on when you realized, “not only do I love this but I’m really good at this. This is something I want to do for the rest of my life?”

EC: You know, when you’re growing up as a teenager in a rock band, you’re just thinking about the girls you can get from being in a rock band. [WG laughs] You don’t know how far it’s going to go. In a dreamlike sense you’d like to become a rock star. So there’s this fantasy of wanting to be a rock star. As for me, when I went to college back in 1980, the year I graduated from high school, I went in as a music major at Oklahoma City Community College. That was where I got my Associate’s degree in music. And in case I didn’t make it in music, I stuck around another year and got my Associate’s in drafting and design because I love drafting. I love architecture. I love the computer. I love lines. and drawing. and layouts, and all that stuff. I design my own CDs, and my letters, and my websites and everything. I do that and I don’t know if I got that from OCCC or what, but I love doing that stuff. If I ever lose my ability to play, I’ll probably go into that field. You’re asking, though, at what point did I think or see or wonder – [WG interjects]

WG: And maybe there wasn’t one.

EC: - if it was going to become my living. You know, I can always remember that as soon as I started playing with Dad and he would give me 30 bucks for the evening, splitting tips or paying me whatever, $50.00 for three or four hours, was really good money for a kid who was working also in the cafeteria, scrubbing tables and dishes, and killing cockroaches off the wall with the hot water [WG laughs] for $1.35 an hour. It was a big, big sign to me that I’d much rather be a musician and make $50 a night. So it was probably a little bit at that point where I knew my potential. I’d much rather do this and make this much money, as opposed to doing that.

WG: That makes sense.

EC: It’s a great thing that I had all these real jobs, throwing papers or selling stuff out of the car or selling insurance or stuff like that. The last real job I had was in 1986. It was one of these selling insurance or something like that. I’ll never forget quitting that. I did supplement myself, from high school all through college and beyond, teaching. To this day I teach a couple of students, but back in the ‘80s and ‘90s I think at one point, I had up to 70 students a week.

WG: Oh wow.

EC: I’d teach during the days and then I’d play at nights and this is very, very good income. All this time I see, “Wow. I could do this for a living.” I’ll never forget the first time I had to see a financial advisor. The guy asked me, “When are you going to retire?” I thought, “Why would I want to retire? Why would I want to quit playing guitar?” I couldn’t answer that question because I was just doing what I loved to do. If you’re doing what you love to do, how can you retire from that?

WG: How fortunate.

EC: Yeah. I guess there’s always been a point where I’ve always known this is what I want to do forever.

WG: A couple of months ago I interviewed Janey Crane and she owned the Black Brick Coffee Shop [EC laughs] over near Oklahoma City University.

EC: (simultaneously) OCU, uh-huh. I’ll be darned.

WG: She thought she remembered you playing there when you were young. Do you have memories of that?

EC: I might’ve played one time with my dad. I do remember Dad meeting Mason Williams there and he used jam there before he wrote that song that made him big. I remember going into the Black Brick and they had black lights and really nice drinks and funky drinks. I think maybe one time I probably did. I can’t say one way or another. But knowing Dad, he would take me to different places. Yeah, it’s definitely possible.

WG: You were the first person, actually, to receive a Bachelor of Music in Guitar Performance from Oklahoma City University. What’s the story behind this and how do you feel about that? Was that something that was created for you?

EC: No, it wasn’t created for me. Back in 1980 when I graduated from Northwest Classen, I had no idea what I was going to do for a living. One of the last jobs I had was selling pots and pans and cue sticks and baskets out of a car. I got fired from that job on the road in Kansas City. I got fired and I had to take a bus home. This was in August, I think, or July of that summer, and I had no plans. I wasn’t planning on going to college. I didn’t think I was smart enough. It was at that point where somebody told me that there’s a music department at the junior college. Oklahoma City Junior College is what it was called back then. I thought, “Well, that sounds easier than going to a real college.” I went and checked it out and next thing I knew I was signed up for 12 hours. I thought, “Wow. I feel like somebody,” because I felt like I had a purpose in life instead of not, getting fired from a job. I started becoming a music major, just a general music major. There was no guitar major. Going through two years of music, I wanted to keep going. After I got my Associate’s in music I wanted to keep going in music, and I applied a couple of

semesters at UCO in Edmond as a music major going on for my Bachelor’s degree. The only reason I chose UCO is it still didn’t sound as hard as OU and I didn’t have enough money for OCU. It was the next biggest music school I’d heard of. I’ll never forget one of the teachers told me, “What’s your major?” “I’m a music major.” “I know, but music majors are either going to teach or they’re going to have an instrument. It’s got to be a band instrument, orchestral instrument, piano, vocal, or percussion.” I didn’t fall under any of those categories. I was just kind of in limbo wondering, “Well, I don’t know.” I’d heard of no guitar major anywhere, and it wasn’t within a year that I heard that OCU was offering a guitar major. I jumped on it right away. I went over there and he accepted me. I got in there and studied four hours of credit per semester as a guitar major. In 1986 I graduated. And since this was the first that I’d heard of a guitar major, I don’t think there was any other college in the state that was offering it. If there was, people didn’t jump on it until after I got my degree. That’s why I think that I was the first real guitar major. I heard someone else tell me a story that there was somebody that went to OU that needed to get his doctorate in guitar, so they had to ship a teacher from Texas to come finish his degree. So there was some other stories I heard about. Other than that, I think I was the first guitar major.

WG: Good timing.

EC: Then my brother Mark was the second.

WG: Oh, he went to OCU too?

EC: He was following me up through junior college and went to OCU afterwards. He passed me. He went on to get his Master’s at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. Now he’s the head instructor there. Mark Cruz is doing very good [WG laughs].

EC: He stayed in that strict classical field. He doesn’t do as much popular or rock stuff as I do.

WG: Aside from all the varieties of music we’ve talked about, do you also do some of your own writing?

EC: I have. Back about 10 years ago my musician friends used to say, “Why don’t you write something?” I’d say, “No, I have no original ideas. I can’t imagine writing something.” “No, you should write something.” They kept bugging me and bugging me. And when my seventh album came out, Spanish Blood, I did write a couple of songs on that album. The first one was “Jobim,” which Carlos Antonio Jobim is the guy who wrote “The Girl from Ipanema.” Beautiful bossa nova, the new music back in those days. So I wrote a song in honor of him because it kind of sounds like Kim [a little difficult to hear], or it reminds me of Kim. And my daughter Sadie had just been born back in ’99. I’ll never forget her sitting in the highchair and I had a musician guitarist friend with me and we were talking. His name was Michael Galazean. Great guitar player. He said, “Edgar, sing something to her.” I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” I called her “bambina,” little baby. [sings] Bambina, chiquito bambina. [speaking normally] I just started singing this little medley and I thought, [singing] da da da da da da da da da da da da. [speaking normally] “Hey, I can use that.” [singing] Da da daaa, da da da da. [speaking normally] So I ended up writing “Bambina.” Those were the first two originals that I wrote, and then I put a couple more on a couple more albums. Guitarras, de Amor has “Calle De Amor,” as well as this song “La Samba Italiana.” Guitarras del Fuego has “Fly Me to Brazil,” and then I did an album with David Hooten called Sweet Georgia Blue, not to be confused with Sweet Georgia Brown. I wrote the title track of Sweet Georgia Blue. It’s kind of a big band-sounding piece, and then my last album Pieces of Edgar is all original with 

the exception of Ravel’s “Bolero,” which was one of those pieces I wanted to show the world could be done on solo guitar. Pieces of Edgar is the original collection. I’ve actually been writing more material for my next original album. I’ve got lots of ideas. I just need to put them together, develop them, and put out another original album. But I’m very excited now because my friends that have been telling me to this – I finally did it. Now I’m like, “Wow. I feel like a composer.” Of course, when you get paid to do it, with using the song in the soundtrack, then you feel like you’ve completely succeeded.

WG: Is there a particular process that you go through when you’re writing music?

EC: Well For me it’s just a matter of sitting down there. And depending on what guitar you pick at, every guitar has a different sound and different tone. When you try different chords on these guitars, depending on if you’re strumming them or doing arpeggios or – depending on what you do, you hear something within that, that little strum or motif or whatever. And then you kind of develop that. So for me a lot of the process is just – or if I’m on tour and I’m in a hotel room and I’m just picking up a guitar, I’ll just sit there and I’ll start playing with it and I start developing it. So there’s different ways, but playing with a little motif and just building it, building chords around it, that’s how I pretty much develop. These days I carry my little Palm Pilot – oh, I hope it’s not going to ring – but it’s got a voice memo and I just record. I pick up that guitar and if I have an idea then I record it because so many songs have been lost because I didn’t record them, either by memo or writing them down by music. So these days I record everything, whether it’s on a laptop, my phone, or wherever.

WH: So nice to have that technology, huh?

EC: Absolutely. I’ve even scatted a thought that was in my head. I had this melody in my head and I go [singing] da da dat, da da da da. [speaking normally] Then I go back and listen to it and I remember what I did. That way, as long as I’ve got a log of ideas, then I can go back on them.

WG: Is there some music or a particular song where you’ve said, “Yeah, that’s a song. That’s a real song.”

EC: [EC laughs] You mean what are one of my ultimate favorite songs?

WG: Yeah, I guess.

EC: Oh God, you better believe most of those fall under the classical category. Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” and “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn,” Holst’s “The Planets.” These are composers and works that they’ve done. Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” There’s so many out there and this goes – “Romanian Rhapsody,” Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.” I could go on and go on. On iTunes I put this list together and that’s what I listen to when I’m working. It calms me. Yeah, it’s mostly classical music is what I love the most. And if I could write something like what they wrote, then I’d be in heaven. Right now I’m just at Composition 101. My compositions are very simple. They’re not really deep in comparison to these classical composers, but they are more advanced than someone who’s had no musical training. They’re definitely moved up. But my brother Mark, who I can’t keep bragging about, makes me look like a beginner because his compositions are so well-developed for guitar. He’s studied all the Bach and all the Preludes. When he writes it sounds like he’s been around a long time and he has. When I compare myself to him, technically there’s a lot of difference. Popular-wise, my melodies are a lot more commercial. In other words, they’re more appealing to more audiences.

WG: Speaking of your audience, who would you say is your customer or fan base?

EC: You know, it just depends on where I’m at. My customer fan base changes depending on every job. Here at Avanti Restaurant it’s older people. They’re laid-back and they like the older jazz and classical, Latin stuff. At a festival, it’s all ages. I’ve seen kids and teenagers and moms and uncles and aunts and cousins of all races at a festival. They show up. I do lots of elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, retirement homes. It depends on where I’m playing at, private parties or adults, it varies.

WG: The first time I ever heard you play was the first race I ever ran. It was a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and I was running along, very new runner at the time. You were sitting on the street playing and I was like, “who is that guy?” Someone was like, “that’s Edgar Cruz.” I just kept going. I didn’t stop and listen.

EC: Yeah I remember doing that. That was out by Bricktown.

WG: How do you think that you’ve managed to stay relevant in a small market like Oklahoma City for so many years? Do you think maybe you’re a big fish in a small pond?

EC: Definitely a big fish in a small pond. If you go to Austin, Nashville, L.A., you’re a tiny fish in a huge pond and there’s so many tiny fish out there. Here in Oklahoma City-- it’s such a big city, that I have grown from a tiny fish and kept here and nourished myself to grow so big to where when people want a guitarist, that’s the first thing they see is the big fish. There’s other guitar players out there but I’m so apparent now that I’ve worked very hard to establish the size that I am. I would never move. I’m too established here in Oklahoma City. My family is here, and all my jobs are here. I rarely have to call them. They’re always calling me, although with the economy it’s kind of starting to turn over. For the most part they’ve always just called. Even though my March, April, and May on my calendar are blank right now, by February those three months will be filled. That’s how my schedule has always worked, consistently. Even in hard times when we have this economy crunch. It’s still that my future months are blank but by the time we get to those months, they get filled up one way or another.

WG: A lot of times when I think about Oklahoma, and what other people who aren’t from here might think about Oklahoma, they think country western or they might even think cowboys or hicks or who knows? There’s lots of stereotypes for Oklahoma.

EC: Right.

WG: So would you say that Oklahoma City has a greater appreciation for classical guitar than people might think, because you are so popular here?

EC: Not necessarily because of me. I think Oklahoma as a whole has grown so much artistically with all the options we offer: the ballet, the orchestra, the musicals, the movies, the symphonies. We have such a great presence of artistic culture that we have worked really hard over the last 40-50 years. So it’s not just me. But guitaristically, when I go outside of Oklahoma, yeah people still think we’re country.

WG: Right.

EC: They do. It’s like, well come inside the bubble and you can experience it another way. It is funny how people still look at us from the outside, and it’s going to take a long time for us to change that. We

are heading that way. I truly believe it with these MAPS projects. We are doing fabulous for ourselves. I’m really very proud to be an Oklahoman, I can tell you, because of everything we’re doing, we’ve done, and what we’re going to do. I don’t even know most of what I’m going to do. I still feel I haven’t hit my pinnacle yet, so I’m still looking forward to doing a bunch of stuff.

WG: It is exciting. There’s been lots of changes. You’ve traveled all over the world. Was there any place that really impacted you or really surprised you in terms of the audience’s reception to your music or how people have responded to what you’ve done?

EC: I was very pleased to see the same kind of response in those other countries as I have here. You still get a lot of claps and cheers at those big songs that you play. Even when I went to the country of Peru, that’s one I’ve never forgotten, those people were so appreciative of great music. I went there a couple of times in ’98. And the second year I took my dad, Manuel, and the great guitarist Tommy Emmanuel from Australia. And he has become the greatest acoustic guitarist of all time now. I took him out there and he, like me, was just so in awe of how much these people appreciated us. It’s simple. They just don’t get that quality of entertainment that often. They have great guitar players but they’re more strict classical. We were out there, and we showed them what the world is full of, all these popular, standards, jazz, and commercial pieces. So Peru is one of the best ones I remember. The only other countries I’ve been in are Italy, France, England, and Mexico. I haven’t been much beyond that. I’ve had lots of inquiries about other places but that’s about it for traveling, besides the Caribbean maybe. I did a cruise ship. That was fun.

WG: Which one was your favorite?

EC: The cruise ship. I think the cruise ship was my favorite because I got paid to go on a cruise and take my family. Absolutely.

WG: That sounds nice.

EC: That was the best. Anytime I can take my family on a vacation and get paid for it, I think we’ll all agree that’s the way to go.

WG: When I think about the way you’ve been trained, we’ve talked about your classical training and then all the different types of music that you’ve played. How big of a role does improvisation play? When you’re playing a piece, especially something that someone else has written and you’ve adapted it and are playing it for yourself, what’s the process for making it your own or using improvisation?

EC: When you say improvisation, the first thing I think of is jazz. When the guy starts his solo, he improvises. He doesn’t do it like he did it last week or the week before. Me, every week I play it pretty much the same because it’s just me. If I had another guy doing rhythms and percussion to back it up, and I could change all that because I wouldn’t have to worry about the chords, then I would improvise more. Since it’s just me 99.9% of the time, then most of my songs are all the same. Preparing these songs before, I always stay to the original version. I don’t improvise or change them or arrange them or dis-arrange them or change keys as much as possible. I try to keep them to as close as people remember hearing them on the radio, except now they’re being played on solo guitar. I’ve always been a purist in that sense. Very rarely do I venture off that. Anybody can arrange and improvise a song from the original version, but to actually do it like it was done except for your instrument, and in my case transcribe it to solo guitar, is very difficult. That Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody” took two months to write

out and another four months just to physically play it because I wasn’t physically good enough to play what I wrote. I thought, “Wow, this is for a more technically advanced guitar player.” I had to become technically better just to play my own arrangement, but I knew that this is how it had to be done. That’s the kind of stuff I love to do.

WG: Where do you see the future of classical guitar music?

EC: In general, or Oklahoma, or worldwide?

WG: In general. Do you think the world will ever see another classical guitarist as well-known as Andrés Segovia or José Feliciano? Would that be you?

EC: Well, there already is and no, absolutely not. There’s one thing that you will never get me to say and that is, “I’m going to be the greatest” or “I am the greatest” or “I have been the greatest.” What’s funny is when I talk about this, people come up to me and say, “You don’t think you’re great?” First thing I tell them is you obviously haven’t been out in the world and seen all the great guitar players out there. There’s a festival I play at every year, the Chet Atkins festival, and I’ve been doing this since 1995 there in Nashville. All these great guitar players, mostly soul guitarists, come out to this. I’ve been there every year since as a headliner. That’s where I discovered just how bad I really was, and it’s not that I’m bad. I should say it like this: I’m just not as good as them. In Oklahoma, I look like this, but if you put me in perspective to the rest of the world and all these great guitar players—or here’s Tommy Emmanuel and and here’s all these other players that have such wonderful technique— there’s just no way I could ever catch up to them. Technically speaking, like Segovia, when we think of Segovia, we think “Wow this guy had it down.” His fingering was perfect. His tone was perfect. He didn’t make any noise on the strings. I make tons of noise. I make tons of mistakes. I cover them up really fast. If you stick me in front of a classical guitarist like Segovia, he’d shoot me down in a minute. Now, if you stick me in front of the local guitar player, he’d praise me in a minute. It depends on who your perspective is, but since I know and I’ve studied and I’ve seen the great guitar players of the world, I know where my place is and I’m completely happy there. I used to be way down here at the bottom, and I worked really hard to get to this point. And commercially speaking, and when I mean commercially when I go out and do a concert, my concerts are as entertaining as Segovia is technically. Does that make sense?

WG: Mm-Hmm.

EC: Okay. Entertainment-wise I’m very happy to be out there entertaining an audience and they are very appreciative. And I’ve worked really hard to get to that point. So entertainment-wise I think I do a really good job, but there’s still so much to learn. There’s still so much I want to change and do to add to my show, whether it’s more guitars or put a screen behind me or bring on a dancer or bring on another guitar. There’s a ton more I’d like to experiment with.

WG: Sure. Do you think there are aspects – when you play there are more performance aspect in addition to your music as far as people recognizing you?

EC: Say that again? Is there more…?

WG: I guess what I’m asking is, you said performance-wise you’re up here. Do you think there’s something you’re doing aside from playing that helps raise that level?

EC: Interaction with your audience, relating to your audience, talking to your audience, breaking the ice with the audience, is so important to any performer.

WG: Do you speak to your audience?

EC: Absolutely. I get them involved. I’ll tell you one of my biggest inspirations, and I rarely tell this story because it depends on who I’m talking to, but one of my inspirations was back in the ‘70s when I went to the Festival of the Arts downtown. This is when it was in front of the Civic Center. I saw this guitar player. He was on a little stage, not bigger than this area. He was over there with some trees on each side and a few chairs with people sitting there just relaxed and quiet. He was playing these really pretty pieces, really simple. Let me give a little example of what he was doing. He’d do something like this. [plays guitar] And then he’d play another song. [plays guitar] Then he doing another song. [plays guitar] After awhile, everything just got to be monotonous and slow and quiet. The people were just sitting there putting their hands on their cheeks, and I noticed that it was just nice and quiet. He was good and he had great technique, but the reason he inspired me was because I wanted to be the opposite of him. I wanted to make people not just sit there and sit there to be resting. I wanted to entertain the audience, so he was a big inspiration for me. As little as he did I learned from, what I would call, his mistakes performance-wise.

WG: Learning what not to do.

EC: Learning what not to do, exactly.

WG: Tell me a little bit about Spanish Blood: The Guitar of Edgar Cruz. How did this project come about?

EC: That’s the DVD?

WG: Yup, documentary.

EC: OETA called me back in the early – about five years ago so 2004-2005. It was around then. They said that they have a series called “Gallery” where they find all these different Oklahomans and they just videotape them about what they’re doing in their life, whether it’s making guitars or being a guitarist or an artist or a sculpture or something like that. They called me and they wanted to follow me and follow my shows, and follow my family, and get at more of the back side of who I am as an individual here in Oklahoma. So that’s what they did. For six months they followed me, and did a bunch of concerts, and edited it and put it together in a 30-40 minute series. They put it on the air and it went over very well. Matter of fact, I heard they got an Emmy for putting that thing together. The narrator did a great job and the story editor David Tamez, Dave Tamez, is the one who did a lot of editing and videotaping. Anyway, that’s what it was. It was a project by OETA and PBS and it’s showing to this day on occasion. They still throw it on there.

WG: When you’re playing, are there any songs that you dread? Someone requests a song and you just say, “Oh geez. I don’t want to have to play that song again.”

EC: It’s funny you say that because every concert I do I have this flyer that has all my albums, all the titles of the album. On the back is my schedule and website, email and bio. I pass this flyer out because a lot of the time I want people to request songs. Like, “Hey if you want to hear anything off any of these albums, I’ll be glad to play it for you.” Now, there are about five or ten songs off of that 200-song list that I can’t physically play anymore or I just forgot. Those would be the ones you’re talking about. If

someone requested one of those I’ll just have to politely say no and pick something really close to that. All that being said, my right thumb has been giving me some physical problems lately. It kind of pokes in like that, and it’s supposed to stay out all the time when I play the bass notes. But it’s being doing that so I’m having to bring it out. This is just a physical problem that’s happened in the last year or two. If that thumb is not working, then just about any song that I play that requires – actually, it only gives me problems when I’m playing really hard loud stuff. If I take a couple of ibuprofens, maybe a wine or two, I’ll be fine. As long as I’m practicing and playing all the time, I’m great. One of my best shows was a few weeks ago at UCO Jazz Lab. I opened up for Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours. They said that was one of the best performances I’ve ever done because I had been playing so many gigs right before that. So as long as I’m playing, I’m fine. It’s when I take a vacation and try and pick it up and play at Avanti – oh, this thing’s not working. That’s when it gets hard. It’s gotten better. It got to a really low point, but it’s getting better.

WG: Good. If we could, I’d like to take a little step away from the music and just say are there things you do for fun? What do you do to relax? Do you have a life outside of music?

EC: [laughs] Nobody’s ever asked me that. I love my family. Danielle, my wife, we’re going to be married 15 years October 29. I’m very excited about that.

WG: Congratulations.

EC: My daughter Sadie is one of the sweetest little girls we’ve ever known. She was born in ’99 so she’s 10 years old right now. Anytime we go out on vacation we go to Disney World. That’s one of our favorite places. Every year I think we’ve been out there. And we never get tired of it. Sometimes we take the Disney Cruise. We just got back from Branson this last week. I love going to see the musicals. We saw a Broadway thing, and Jim Stafford has become a good friend of mine. He does a great show out there. Anytime they can travel with me at a gig that’s always an experience, because any time we go to hotels and take my daughter swimming. That’s always fun to do. Beyond my family, which would come first, my other hobbies would be working with video. I can’t wait to start documenting all these multiple tapes I’ve got throughout years and years. I think since the mid ‘80s I have video of me, so eventually I’ll put together something. Recording, making albums, designing the albums, designing DVDs, this is stuff that I want to do in the future. This is a hobby of mine. Just creating music in general is a hobby. I haven’t even set up my studio at home yet. I’ve been paying other people and using theirs. When I get my home studio set up, I foresee many albums coming out a lot quicker. It’s been two years since my last album Pieces of Edgar, and I feel really behind. The 16 albums I have now are holding me over okay. I’m doing alright.

WG: Sixteen. That’s excellent.

EC: Sixteen and two DVDs so I’m doing alright. I’m not too worried about it.

WG: I’ve just got a couple more questions for you.

EC: You bet.

WG: How has your life, or has it been different, than you might have imagined it?

EC: How has my life been different than I might’ve imagined it?

WG: Maybe it hasn’t. You mentioned you’ve always loved and played music.

EC: I guess it’s – [pauses]

WG: I guess what I’m saying is was there something you ever saw yourself doing that you haven’t done?

EC: Not really. I’ve always worked very hard to do this. I knew that I wanted to get out of the band because you deal with a lot of attitudes and irresponsibilities. Here, with myself, the only attitudes and irresponsibilities is with myself. I’ve let myself down before. I’ve stood me up at gigs before, but that’s so rare it’s not worth mentioning. So no, I’ve worked really hard to do what I’ve wanted to do. I wish I could have put out more albums. I wish I would have gotten that studio down. But you can’t do everything; I have so many jobs. I’m the engineer. I’m the draftsman. I’m the agent. I’m the designer. I’m the husband. I’m the father. There’s so many jobs that I have that it’s so hard to do everything. I’m just doing the best I can.

WG: And you’re doing great.

EC: The best has been good. I’m happy.

WG: Are there any really important lessons in life that you might want to share with us?

EC: Yeah I’ll never forget back when I was studying classical guitar, I thought I had to be the next Segovia. You mentioned that. Here I was, always under that shadow of trying to be the best. And it worried me to death. I tried so hard, and I’d always see somebody better. It was the day that I realized I wasn’t supposed to be the best is when my confidence shot up 200%. That day when I, “Well, forget what everybody thinks. Here’s what I do, mistakes and all. Oh, so I made a mistake. So what? Hey, are you guys enjoying yourself?” That day when I started to let loose and just have fun with it, that’s the biggest lesson I could tell anybody. Don’t expect more of yourself because you are who you are. You’ll make yourself bigger and better, but right now you’re supposed to be where you’re at. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned, is just be who you are and where you’re at. Accept yourself from there. If you really want to, you’ll do something about it to make yourself bigger and better. That’s what I’m doing, as much as I can, to make myself bigger and better. That’s the biggest lesson I learned. I’m sure there’s been many other lessons.

WG: That’s a good one. I think we all need to learn that one.

EC: Oh, yes, there is one more lesson.

WG: Please share.

EC: Pay off your debts as soon as possible. Pay cash as much as possible. That is a huge thing. Just stay out of debt. Teach your kids that right now. Right now.

WG: [laughs] Okay. How would you like to be remembered?

EC: As the guitar player from Oklahoma who stepped outside of the bubble and showed people that, “Wow. I didn’t realize the guitar could do so much. I didn’t realize the guitar was capable of executing these passages or these songs.” Just to be a little bit known for that, I’m happy. There’s always going to be greater guitar players than me and that’s great. I’m all for that, but if I could be just a little part of that in contributing to future guitar players, yeah. Nothing thrills me more than going up to a festival

and somebody coming up to me, and the parents are talking to their kids, and their parents remember me going to their elementary school when they were kids. I thought, “Really? You remember that? Wow, I must have left some kind of impression.” If I’m leaving a little impression to help inspire guitar players, then I’m good to go.

WG: That’s excellent. Okay, this is the last question. I was just going to say is there anything that you would like to share that I didn’t ask you?

EC: If you get a chance, please visit my website. It’s edgarcruz.com. C-R-U-Z. That’s like my sister Penelope, not like my brother Tom. [WG laughs] You can see all my current schedules and new dates added all the time. You can hear every single album, every song I’ve ever recorded. You can see videos. There’s over 80 videos as of right now. I’m going to add hundreds more in the future, but if you want to see everything that we’ve been talking about those are all linked to YouTube. Come out and see me sometime.

WG: I sure will. Just to end this interview, I just want to say thank you so much Edgar, and then were you maybe going to play a little something for us?

EC: Oh, yeah. Let’s do an original. I was wondering what I was going to play for you, but original’s always the best. [plays guitar] Here’s one I wrote for my daughter Sadie. She’s ten years old and I call this “Sadie’s Suite.” S-U-I-T-E. It goes a little bit like this. [plays guitar]

WG: [claps] Thank you Edgar, so much.

EC: Thank you. I appreciate it, and I wish you all the best on all you’re projects that you’re doing for Oklahoma. Congratulations to you.

WG: Thank you.