Enlarge By Brice Stump, The Daily Times Jim Cochran, a blind man living on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore, has been inducted into Maryland's Country Music Legend's Hall of Fame.  Interactive Calendar

Those early appearances led him to his first gigs with country star Tex Ritter at 11 years old, and then to playing in bars and clubs through his teen years.

Recently inducted into Maryland's Country Music Legends Hall of Fame, Cochran said he was proud to have the recognition after 40 years on the road playing for country stars, including Waylon Jennings to Dolly Parton.

Legally blind, Cochran failed his junior high music class because he couldn't read the sheet music. But by then, he was already steeped in country tradition, able to pick out most songs on his guitar after one listen.

"I would go to school and come home from school and listen to my mother's old stereo albums, whatever was on the Grand Ole Opry —Jim Reeves, Eddie Arnold, Ray Price and Marty Robbins— and she would always get mad at me because I wouldn't go to bed and I'd have to get up early for school," Cochran said. "I'd just lay on that living room floor and listen to them sing. That's where I learned most of my songs, just singing along with them."

His father, Harold Cochran, was also a country musician, who with his band the Blue Mountain Playboys performed with Roy Clark and Jimmy Dean.

Eventually, Cochran's father was forced to put down his guitar and work the family farm.

"My mother had eight children, and she said its either me or the music," Cochran said. "He quit the guitar then and never played again."

But the son was just getting started.

"It was my life; that's all I could do," Cochran said. "Of course we lived on farms most of my life, so I had to do my chores like everybody else that's been on a farm. ... But, there was always the country music going no matter what we were doing. I had a couple uncles and aunts that were into gospel music with my father years ago and they'd come around the house and we'd all sing together. It just got in my blood and stayed there."

Now 57 years old, Cochran has a lot of memories from life on the road. Despite playing with dozens of Nashville stars, he said his favorite times were always on the road with his own group, the Cheyenne Band.

"You're in a different town every night and it can wear you out when you're on the bus with the same seven or eight people and it ain't easy," he said. "But we had good days."

From using hubcaps and pennies in place of forgotten cymbals, to cutting off his thumb with a power saw and regaining its use through playing guitar, Cochran's stories from 40 years on the road are nearly endless.

Cochran recalled the time a friend called inviting him to play at the Grand Ole Opry with Jean Shepard. While Cochran was traveling from Baltimore to Nashville, his friend had broken up with his wife, lost his job, lost his home "and when I got to Nashville I couldn't find him. I had one dollar in my pocket and two guitars."

One was '36 Gibson Flattop, the other a Danelectro he'd had since he was 9. Figuring the Gibson was worth more, he traded the Danelectro to a stranger for transportation to a bus station.

"I gave him the guitar and we walked around the block and it was right there," he said. "Then, I get home and I find out the guitar was worth $7,000."

Now living with his wife in Bivalve on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Cochran said he's trying to get back into playing music and is looking for local musicians to start a classic country band.

"It's just today everything has gone country rock and you very seldom hear a country singer come out with a good country song anymore," he said. "I hope it stays alive, because a lot of the old-timers that started it are gone now and it's up to the younger ones to keep it going."

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