Born in Moss Point, Mississippi in 1955, he was composing, painting and writing stories by age eight. He wrote his first rag in 1971, at which time he was especially interested in the music of Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, Charles Ives and Alexander Scriabin, whose work he encountered and studied independently of any teacher. Since then he has composed over eighty-five ragtime related piano pieces while continuing to work in a variety of other musical languages.