The Other Side of Famous

By Jeff K Dezern

This book shows how the power of God can be used in many different ways. For instance in this book the toll God used to save my life was MUSIC!!!!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543976762

Book preview

The Other Side of Famous

Copyright © 2019 by Jeff K Dezern

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54397-675-5

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54397-676-2

Contents

Forward

Chapter 1: My Childhood

Chapter 2: My Introduction to Drugs

Chapter 3: White Knights of Liberty,Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Chapter 4: The FamousGreensboro 1979 Shoot out

Chapter 5: KKKKvsThe Hell’s Angels

Chapter 6: God Plants the Seedof Music

Chapter 7: Mamas Prayers Come Through

Chapter 8: Living with My Demons

Chapter 9: Nashville Bound

Chapter 10: The Holy Ghost Finds Me

Chapter 11: From the Streets to aStreet Ministry

Chapter 12: My First Record Deal

Chapter 13: A Life BornA life Saved

Chapter 14: VICTORY SQUAD STREET MINISTRY

Chapter 15: Nashville Bound II

Chapter 16: The Harmonica

Chapter 17: Music City Writer’s NightsThe Lifeblood of Nashville

Chapter 18: LOVE

Forward

Write a book, Jerry Foster said, after I told him some of my story setting at a dim lit table at Debbie Champion’s Writers Night in Nashville Tennessee. I just laughed, and Jerry said No, I’m serious, then he proceeds to tell me how my story needs to be heard. I could appreciate what Jerry was telling me, but the whole time he was talking I was thinking about the last book I wrote that was laying in my bathroom floor at home propping up a cabinet. Yeah, that’s what I need, more expensive props, I was thinking to myself, lol!!!! Needless to say, I went home that night never intending to write the book!

A few weeks went by and I saw Jerry again at a Writers night. The first thing he asked me, ‘have you started your book yet’? And of course, I said no.

So here we sat again at a dim lit table in the heart of Nashville with Jerry telling me why I have to write this book! And that’s when it hit me! When you have a Hall of Fame Song Writer putting his heart into telling you that you need to write a book, you shut up and do it! So, I gave Mr. Foster my word that I would write a book, and my Papa Miles always said, ‘Son your only as good as your word’. So now your reading this book as I am a man of my word.

I will be mentioning a lot of my friends that I grew up with in this book, but most of the ones I will be mentioning were dead by the age of 50.

I have many reasons for not wanting to write this book mainly because I have to go back into dark areas of my life that consist of drug addiction, demonic possession and far too much violence. I will be telling you a lot of things about myself that I am by no means proud of. I can say that, ‘all the wounds have healed, but the scars still remain’. As I write this book and look back in my past it’s as if I’m watching a movie of someone else s life! But it’s not! It’s my life! It’s my past and if I have to own it. And if one things for sure! If I can use it to help someone’s else s life I am going to do it. In this book the dark has to be brought out in order to show the light, and the Almighty Power of God!

I would like to thank Jerry for his confidence in me to do write this book and all of you who read it.

And just to note: Everything I will be telling you is under the blood of Jesus Christ! I have been redeemed from the curse of the law and set free from the chains that bind. By the ALMIGHTY POWER OF THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. That being said, here I go!!!!

Chapter One

My Childhood

My name is Jeffrey Keith Dezern, I was born in 1961 in a small tobacco town called Winston-Salem located North Carolina. My father was James E. Dezern and mother is Peggy Dezern Grizzele. My mom is from a hole in the wall town called Sparta in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains and my father was from Yadkin County North Carolina. He was a WWII hero with 3 Silver Stars and 2 Bronze Stars and fought in 4 Theatres, but you would never know it by talking to him. While he was alive I had no idea he was such a decorated WWII Veteran. I found his records after he passed away and discovered all of his medals.

After daddy got out of the war he became a truck driver for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, N.C. My mom and dad took very good care of us. A roof over our head, food, and clothes, we never went without! Now, I would like to say that most kids that grow up and turn out bad or dysfunctional is a direct result of a bad childhood, but that isn’t the case here. Like I said my parents took very good care of us, I have no one to blame for my actions but myself! Not even my mom or dad could stop the self-destruction of this snowball headed for hell that I was trapped inside of.

I have one brother Brad Dezern who is a couple years older than me. We were 60’s babies, growing up back in the day when your mother would pack you a sack lunch and send you out the door to play outside all day. We would ride our bikes miles from the house and venture deep in the woods and nobody cared, and we would show up back home and dinner time.

In the 60’s a truck would drive through our neighborhood once a week and spray bug spray laying out a thick fog that us kids would run and play in until the fog disappeared. It’s a wonder none of us don’t have 3 ears or 3 eyes after breathing that poison in for 10 years lol.

It was a different time back then, parents didn’t have to worry about their kids being molested or kidnapped. So, for a whole decade we could roamed free and could go where ever we wanted too.

After daddy got out of the war he could not handle civilian life and carried the violent rage he lived in during the war over into his civilian life. Now days they call it PTSD. But back then there was no name for it and veterans all across the country had no help and many turned to drugs and alcohol as my father did.

Daddy drank strong, I was a baby and don’t remember it. Especially the time he broke our coffee table with a shot gun and pulled a pistol on me and my mother while I was setting on her lap.

My mom’s sister had a boyfriend that did something to her, I can’t remember what it was, but daddy took him out in the yard and beat him with the end of a water hose.

I don’t really remember much of the violence. My childhood memories take place when daddy turned to God and we started going to Woodland Baptist Church in Winston-Salem.

He got off the alcohol and became active in the church. Driving a church bus and became head of the Children’s Ministry. I think I was around 3 or 4 years old. When he laid the bottle down and became a changed, loving, caring man for the rest of his life.

So, I basically grew up in church from a child to a teenager. I mean we were in Church 3 days a week and every Thursday night we would go witnessing like clockwork for years. I remember around the age of 7 daddy standing me at the door of Roses Department Store handing out Gospel tracks. I mean it was church, church, church up until the age of sixteen!

When I was in the second-grade mama and daddy put us in Woodland Baptist Christian School to shield us from the integration and violence in the public schools.

You see, in the 60’s when the integration of busing black people into white schools began, it was not an easy transition. There were riots and fights, race against race. This went on for years before it settled down.

So, you can see I had a great life grounded in the word of God growing up as a child. The word of God I had crammed down my throat that I would soon come to hate would be the saving Grace of my life years down the road.

My mom grew up about seventy miles away up the Blue Ridge Mountains in a town called Sparta, North Carolina and we were traveling up the mountain on a regular basis so she could see her family. So, part of my childhood includes growing up in the blue ridge mountains.

My earliest memory of growing up in the Blue Ridge mountains is when I was around 4 or 5 years old. It was Christmas morning on the mountain with snow so deep us kids weren’t allowed to play outside because it was too dangerous. With an orange, warm glow from Papa’s coal stove wrapping around my face I played with my toy astronaut with red and green flashing lights spinning around on his helmet that Santa had bought me.

I remember the food was amazing, Granny was a Mountain Women Cook for sure, with a huge plate of pig brains and scrambled eggs for breakfast with gravy and biscuits on a regular basis.

But, I guess I’d have to say that the Blue Grass music that ran through my family was one of my greatest memories on that mountain.

You see my Papa was a banjo picker and my uncles all played instruments. There was music around us kids all the time, I remember they would set us in the middle of the floor while being surrounded by a circle of musicians around the room with banjo pickers, mandolin pickers, guitar pickers, fiddle players, standup bass which we call a ‘Dog House’ in Carolina, and Mama would play the spoons while Granny would play a wash board. In the summer time there was always a group of guys setting under the old shade tree in Papa’s front yard picking and grinning. There was always the sweet sound of Blue Grass music ringing through the trees at Papa’s house.

Papa had a Blue Grass album out from the late 1930’s called The Red Fox Chasers which was a big hit. Back then if you could sell 10,000 copies of an album you were considered big time! And that they did.

Too young to know better, I had no idea about the time all these great pickers I grew up around. It was just another day in the mountains for me, being around music was just a given. I never thought much about it growing up and for sure had no idea how this Blue Grass music that I was surrounded by would someday save my very soul.

It was during this time I befriended my cousin, Marty Royal (RIP). We were both the same age and as thick as thieves. Marty lived on the mountain and taught me how to be a country boy! We ran through those blue grass fields of Sparta, chasing bulls and roaming those green fields for miles and when we got thirsty we would drink that cool, clear mountain water straight from the natural springs flowing from out of the ground.

We had the best time of our lives! Marty and I ran together for years, did a lot of the same bad things together. It saddens my heart to tell you Marty lost his life to an overdose in his late 40’s, but our memories still roam those blue grass hills forever. RIP Marty Royal.

It was also during this time, I think I was around 7 or 8 years old, my father gave me a harmonica from Germany from when he was in WWII. And for the life of me could not figure out how to play that thing. So, eventually it ended up broken in pieces from where I would slam it on the ground out of aggravation! So much for playing the harmonica.

Like I said I was in a private Baptist School, the place where my mother and father thought I would be safe from the world, but no parent can fully protect their children from the world, and no parent can prepare themselves for the pitfalls that befall their children. And I was no different.

But all was fine, everything was OK in my life until I hit my teenage years and started rebelling.

Chapter Two

My Introduction to Drugs

Moving on, years went by while becoming a teenager where I could have cared less about my music heritage and that sweet sound of Blue Grass music wrapping around the trees and blowing through the air on top of the mountain.

The year was 1976, I was 15 years old when I had my first introduction to drugs and the Harmonica (again). My parents had me in a private Baptist School to try and shield me from all the bad going on, but it didn’t work.

At the ripe young age of 15, I started drinking, smoking weed, and playing the harmonica again. Something inside me was burning to learn how to play this thing. Week after week, month after month, I would set alone for hours blowing the reeds out of this thing trying to figure it out.

When I was 16, I would get me a 5th of Jim Beam and go and set way out in the middle of the woods, where no one could hear me, drinking the whole 5th of liquor. I would set in the woods all day till the sun went down blowing on this beast I had to conquer!

It still amazes me how I would find myself setting in the woods for hours on end blowing on this harmonica. And though I was out in the woods alone I somehow felt quite comfortable and at home.

I would carry my shot gun with me in case I saw a squirrel or two. I was always hunting squirrels. I remember my mom would come from work and I would have a pot of squirrels cooking on the stove stinking the whole house up.

By the time I hit 10th grade I was eating mushrooms and dropping acid. Needless to say, I was kicked out of the private school and started attending Mt. Tabor School in Winston-Salem. By 11th grade I was dropping acid and going to class. My teacher would walk by pick my head up off of my desk by the back of my hair and my head would plop back down on the desk!

There was a party every Friday morning in the parking lot of RJ Reynolds High School, where I attended after finishing school at Mt. Tabor. We would have acid, hash, opium, oh yeah and beer that we would steal every Thursday night from different restaurants right out their back door!

Racial tensions were high in the 70’s, it hadn’t been that long since schools were integrated and Winston- Salem was no exception. The racial tensions were ALWAYS high growing up!

And mine just grew higher and blew through the roof the day 3 black guys tried to steal my weed in the parking lot. I pulled my shot gun out of the trunk and chased them through the school yard. The next day they caught me all by myself and jumped me in the gym and it was a knock down drag out.

That was my first time fighting 3 people at once, so I didn’t do too well. The coaches finally broke us up and took us to the office. With a swollen head I sat there while the principle suspended all of us for 3 days.

Two days later I walk in the kitchen and my dad’s sitting there at the table with a letter in his hand from the school. He said, Boy, they don’t want you around there anymore. Then he proceeded to read the letter to me which said, We have decided to expel your son for the safety and protection of our RJ Reynolds High school!

Here I am 17 years old kicked out of 2 schools eating acid, drinking shine anything I could get my hands on and loving it! I could have cared less about getting kicked out of school. As far as I was concerned it was a pain in my ass I no longer have to deal with.

You know I replay that image often of my daddy reading that letter to me as I raise my son now. I can only imagine what it would feel like if I had to read the same letter to my son. If I could