Cliff Starkey is one of the original players with the ‘Groovemasters’. He talks about his great passion for music and how he learned to play the piano. Cliff gets great joy giving back – sharing his bag of tricks with people who can read music. Cliff is from the school of performance learning by osmosis.

Cliff says on his father’s side of the family everyone had a talent, music, singing and art. Cliff started out as an artist. He remembers his uncle fondly recalling the way he could ‘walk a baseline’. He watched his uncle saying his name, ‘Cliff’ and playing cool jazz chords.

Cliff Starkey never owned a piano growing up. He would keep it in his head till he could get to a piano, figure it out and make it his own. Anything he heard, he kept in his head. After school he would stay late, sitting at the piano till he could figure out how to play the music that was in his head.

Cliff Starkey says Bennie Simms is like a big brother to him. Bennie took him under his wing and Cliff shares the rest of the story of how that unfolded into Cliff’s opportunity to play with ‘The Three Degrees’ and then end up on the ‘Emeril Lagasse’ show.

Cliff Starkey says “it’s all about the music”. His interest in music gave him something. Something big! Now he shares it with us.