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Hi Folks... Charley Groth here. I've decided to include this section of the web site because some of you may be interested in knowing something about the person who has put together the Sunshine State Acoustic Music Camp--and my other projects...of which there are quite a few. Making music; teaching music; having truly high quality, satisfying and rewarding experiences in life (music-related or not); and helping others have experiences like that have always been important to me. My many good friends and my family (related by blood or not) are very important to me. I consider my true friends to be my family. I look for the good in life, and try to help create it where I can. I choose to be happy and I try to help others be happy as I pass through this world. I founded the SSAMC many years ago, and I remain the camp director today. I started the camp because I love to teach and love to learn. I discovered there was no learning camp of the kind I had in mind anywhere in Florida. I knew about the Boyd Hill Environmental Studies Area--a near-perfect place to have a camp--because I had produced a few festivals on the site. After doing some very encouraging research I went to work, organized the camp, and we've been rolling ever since. Of course I could never have made the camp a reality without the energetic help and warmhearted cooperation of our great staff of teachers, assistants, and our wonderful volunteers. The SSAMC has been a very rewarding project.

To put a face with the name, here's a picture of me. This is a promotional shot taken in Laramie, Wyoming while I was doing a July 4 show there in 2006. Certainly there are lots of miles on that face! The small picture at the top of this page, by the way, was taken a few years back as I played in the CI5 Club, a music pub in Prague, Czech Republic. One of the greatest surprises of my life came while I was playing at CI5, when a man stood up in the audience and requested, in Czech, that I play my song Florida Moon, which at the time had not been released in Europe! (Turns out he had seen the address of my web site on a poster, had called up the site, and had played a short sound clip of part of Florida Moon which is offered there. He wanted to hear the rest of it!)

To be honest--I love to be on the stage...but I've always enjoyed sitting around living rooms and festival campground campfires jamming informally with friends (old and just met) every bit as much as I enjoy performing in shows. It's all music, and I love it all, always.

I've been giving private music lessons since I was about fourteen too. I was born about 10,000 years ago, as the old song says, so that has been several years now!

All my life I've been a musician, often working at it full time, on the road and off. Played my first music job for $$ (five dollars, actually--and it was big money to me) when I was fourteen years old. I've since done lots and lots of performing and lots and lots of recording in lots and lots of places and situations, with lots and lots of people...and I've enjoyed it all. It has been my pleasure to play on albums with a wide range of fine musicians, and I've made a number of albums of my own over the years. There are more to come! I have worked in recording and sound reinforcement for a great many years, and today I have my own small recording studio (both full digital and analog service). Yes, the studio is available for hire. I love all kinds of music, and have had some experience in many flavors of it. I also love to write, and I've written many songs and instrumentals. I am a BMI writer. It has been my good fortune to have had quite a few of my compositions performed and recorded by musicians over the years. Some have been published in various magazines too. It is always fun to hear someone's version of one of my pieces. Musicians as far afield as New Zealand and Europe have performed my work. If you want to perform any of them, go to it! That's why I write them. If you want to record something I've written, let me know. I'm very unlikely to say no. To hear some of my music, click HERE . Use top menu to continue through the site.

That's me on the right in the picture at left, with Donna Samuels, who was my wife and my partner in life for many of my earlier years. We were hippie kids together. It was great to be young in the sixties! The photo was taken near our home in New Mexico. I visited with Donna in the summer of 2000, for the first time in almost 20 years. We had a nice time. Of course neither of us looks this way anymore, but this is how I always see Donna in my mind's eye. I was teaching when we lived in New Mexico, and long before that. These days I'm on the road with music so much I've had to put private teaching on a back burner, and I regret that. I love teaching. It is a thrill for me to be able to pass on some of what I know, and in doing that, to enhance the ability of others to enjoy making music. When I have time to do it, I teach guitar, piano/keyboard, bass, mandolin, Dobro, Autoharp (including my complete melody system) and other instruments, on the entry level and in a wide variety of more advanced styles and techniques).

I teach singing, music theory and music reading, song and instrumental composition, and other subjects as well. I have an extensive professional and college background. Please feel free to contact me about what interests you.

This has always been one of my favorite pictures of Jan Milner, taken shortly after we first got together as a couple in the late 1980's. We had great times together and made a lot of music as a duo, too. Recorded one album together, Jan's Sunshine State Dulcimer, which is still available on cassette. Jan is a multi-instrumentalist and a singer. Today she performs in the group Hot Flash with Rochelle Morris and Linda Fackeldey. Jan and I have not been together for some years now, but we have much love and respect for each other and remain good friends.

After a lifetime on the music road, mostly in the western parts of the United States, then my time in Orlando, Florida, and with Jan, living in Crystal Beach, Florida, I've settled down (kind of) in a big old house I bought about ten years ago in Largo, Florida. I've had great fun restoring my place, and I enjoy living in it very much. As my career in music has expanded worldwide, I'm not at home as often as I would like to be!

In my Largo house I now have room for all of my musical instruments, room to teach, room to store some instruments I have for sale, room for my recording studio, a nice big workshop in my garage, room for my millions of books, and so on. It is all just about right for my present time in life. I have a host of good friends, all the music I want, and, when I'm home from the long road, the beautiful Florida weather that allows me to sit on my big screened-in front porch and feel pretty darned good most evenings! (That's my porch on the left. Come and sit a spell if I'm around when you get to Largo, Florida!) People from all around this old planet have relaxed on that porch. I do choose to be happy in life--and these days for me that's easily accomplished.

Above, left, is a picture of one of my musical groups playing somewhere in the great American west probably some thirty years ago. I'm in the middle. Gary Eaton, guitar, is on the left, and Jed Allen, bass, is on the right. Jack Wyatt, drummer, isn't in this picture, but you can see one of his cymbals on the extreme right in this shot. I believe Jack is gone. He was a great guy and a super musician. I tried to find the other two guys on a trip west last year, but didn't have much luck. Heard that Gary was in Arizona and doing okay. Couldn't locate Jed. Above, right, another of my musical groups, Easy Street, is shown playing at the Magnolia Stage music park near Bushnell, Florida, on April 21, 2001. Doug Travers, of Lutz, Florida, is on the left of this shot, playing guitar, and Tim Lewis, of Pinellas Park, Florida, is on the right, playing bass. That's me in the middle.

To the right, yet another musical group of mine, Strings and Wood, at the Barberville Pioneer Settlement festival, one of my favorite Florida events. I'm in the middle, with Doug Travers, left, on guitar, and Chris Campbell, right, on bass, supporting. Looks like some of my favorite performing setups don't change much, do they?

I think there are really only two kinds of music: good and bad. I try to stick to the good stuff, and I enjoy all kinds of it. I have a great Yamaha electronic piano, so I can play ragtime and blues and swing and western swing. A really wonderful application of digital technology, that piano sounds just about like a grand. Feels like a real piano too. Amazing. The jazz organ setting yields a pretty good B-3 imitation and lets me get into some of my Jimmy Smith licks. I have a really fine Gibson Herb Ellis hollowbody guitar that has some sweet music in it. I've pulled some of it out from time to time--swing, blues, rags, country ballads...all kinds of stuff. Sometimes I'll take a ramble on my Gibson lap steel guitar also. I like 'em all.

I like to play a lot of music on non-electric instruments as well. That's where I started in music. I love to play my mandolin--tunes like the one I call Texas Doubleheader because it is a medley of Beaumont Rag and Ragtime Annie, both Texas tunes. I do some mellow pieces on the mandolin also, like Sissle and Blake's Memories of You and Lara's Theme from the movie Dr. Zhivago. When I'm flatpicking or fingerpicking folk-style guitar, I use an Augustino acoustic steel-string instrument. Augie LoPrinzi, who made it, is a longtime friend of mine. We like to get together to complain about the way things are today (as compared to how wonderful they were when we were young). Augie makes a hell of a good guitar. I have a nice Guild, too, that I like for open tunings; a Dobro, a 1930's Epiphone archtop, and probably some additional instruments I've forgotten about right now. Musicians are like that! I'm very active as a performer in jazz, folk/acoustic, blues, and a wide range of other styles, both individually and (as I prefer) in duo, trio, and larger group formats, in situations both less and more formal. (Yes, believe it or not, I have a nice black suit and even a tux if needed!) I'm available for bookings on an ongoing basis. Let me know about your entertainment needs, and maybe we can do something. You know, friends, if I can just go on and on and on for a long time yet, making the best music I know how to make, right to the end, I'll be satisfied. That's all I need. That's my life now.

This next picture shows me with the great Merle Travis, at a high point in my career on the road. I had the opportunity to make music with this legendary artist quite a few years ago. You'll notice I had hair and a dark beard away back then! The picture's here because I'm mighty proud to have had my times with Travis!

	I've had the pleasure of meeting and making music with multitudes of other great people over the years. You'd know the names of some of them. Others are not so widely known, never will be, but are among the hottest musicians and best human beings on earth. I've had many wonderful friends who have not been musicians, too. With me on the left is one of those, Marjorie Guthrie, Woody's widow. She was a great person who was not a musician but who deeply understood music and musicians. Had a fine dry wit, too! Her many stories about Woody and others were fascinating to hear. In this picture we are judging at a Woody Guthrie folksinging competition that was part of a festival in Iowa.
The world is full of good people. Sometimes the jerks make us forget that, but we should keep it firmly in mind!

Okay! Now you may know a little more about me than you did before. I'll try to add to what I've included here as time permits. We're talking history, so I'll wind up this part of the section with a really old picture of Charley Groth. Yep, that was me...just a few years back! This was taken on the old family farm, probably in 1944 or 1945. You can see a John Deere tractor over my shoulder. In the original picture there was a barn behind me a little farther away on my left. As you see I was a city kid... Before I go I do want to mention several other services I offer: I sell, buy, and broker musical instruments. Click on

[For Sale] in the top menu for more information. I also do repair work and repair referral. Sometimes it isn't easy to find someone who is really good at repairing a particular type of instrument. I try to be acquainted with a range of talented people. I have created and sell numerous musical learning aids--my Chordmaster chart, the Autoharp Melody System, and numerous others. Contact me if you are interested in these. I present seminars on musical subjects. Two of the more popular ones are the Nuts and Bolts of Music: A Look Under The Hood seminar on how music works, and my Charley Groth Guitar Clinics. If you would like to know more about anything that appears on this page, e-mail me at charleygroth@yahoo.com Later, my friends... Charley