Piney Woods was not like any ordinary school; it was more like a trade school [, …] a school of higher learning, in a country life. Whatever trade you wanted to learn, you could decide on what you wanted to be in life, like a brick mason, a carpenter, a cement finisher, or a musician. [...] Of course I was interested in music, and that is what I mostly studied from age ten up to where I am now. It was music that was the cause of me knowing what two and two is. Even today, I look back on my life and the early years and see where music has played a very important part.

One thing that was interesting about the school was that we never had any performers to come on campus to do our social activities. The [school] band was large enough so that we played our own social functions and gatherings. Sometimes in the summer we would sign up everyone to do it. We would travel across the country with the Piney Woods Band Glee Club. That's where I learned a lot about singing, doing a lot of gospel music and such. Back in the forties it would get super cold indoors compared to what it is now with modern heat, so we would sing gospel music in the dormitory. What I remember is that we had only steam from the radiators to keep us warm. We would get in a group in a room and do a lot of this singing just to keep from freezing.