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Don Van Palta
Performance Hall of Fame 2000 Don Van Palta�s earliest childhood memory was of his father playing tenor banjo while singing him to sleep. It was an influence that marked the course of his future life. The "Flying Dutchman" spent his early years in occupied Holland during World War II. He first taught himself to play the ukelele, but after seeing a British film starring comedian banjoist George Formby, he was taken "hook, line and sinker" by the banjo. When his mother secured the necessary paperwork, they immigrated to the United States, and settled in Sacramento. It was there that he purchased his first tenor banjo from a pawn shop. Some of his fellow students invited him to join a Dixieland band they were forming, because they needed a banjo player and knew he had one. He had tuned his tenor banjo guitar style, but when someone told him he should tune it properly, he did and learned tenor banjo chords. He was the banjoist for the "Levee Loungers" band, when he saw his first professional banjoist, Scotty Dogget. When he asked why Dogget was playing different chords, Scotty told him it was plectrum tuning. Don went home and tuned his banjo to plectrum and started learning new chords. Unfortunately he tuned it C-G-B-D not C-G-D-B and once again had to start over. In 1954 "Shakey" Johnson opened his first Shakey�s Pizza Parlor in Sacramento. Don performed there for seven years with pianist Bill Ericson as "The Fingerbusters." Van Palta credits Ericson with opening his eyes to the wide range of music the banjo is capable of producing. When Van Palta met Fred Soetje who was opening a speakeasy-type saloon in San Diego, he became the banjoist in the Mickey Finn Show. When the Mickey Finn Show moved to Las Vegas, Van Palta decided to go solo. He was asked to replace the late Eddie Peabody at a national festival, and then performed with Jerry van Dyke�s night club act for five months. Eventually he created his own act which he has presented world wide aboard cruise ships. Don Van Palta also developed a series of instructional tapes to help young banjoists become productive players. He is respected as a teacher and performer and continues to entertain as "The Flying Dutchman."
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