NEW ORLEANS -- When Joshua Long, 12, gets off the school bus, he has one thing on his mind: finishing his homework, because only then will it be time to drum.
When he was four years old, all he wanted was a set of drums -- and when he got them, it was over.
“It was really exciting and I knew from there that I really wanted to play drums,” he said.
Joshua plays a couple of hours a day, more on weekends. He never took lessons, but by watching videos and listening to songs, he taught himself.
“He plays and plays and plays,” said his father Chris Long. “Then he'll go back in there, he might play three or four times a day. It’s just something that’s in him. I think it’s just instilled in him about music and playing. He loves music.”
But this summer his parents thought it was time to transform Joshua's natural ability into some formal training. So he hooked up with music teacher Joey Winters.
“I can remember the first lesson,” Winters said. “He came in and I was blown away.”
The first thing Winters does with a new drummer is pick up his guitar and play. How the student keeps up will tell the teacher what he has to work with. And Joshua never missed a beat.
“Yeah, I get a little blown away with his age, you know,” said Winters. “You get caught up in the music with him and he's like playing with an old pro that's been playing for years.”
Joshua's mom, Yolanda, had watched her son play for years, but never like this.
"It was just amazing,” Yolanda Long said. “I had to walk out and cry for a little bit and come back in because it was just overwhelming.”
Overwhelming because they were songs from the 1970s, and one right into another. Songs Joshua had never heard before.
“Never heard of it, never practiced it or nothing,” Joshua explained. “I just started following along and try to keep the beat.”
Like a lot of New Orleans stories, there's often a little lagniappe, and this one's no different, because when we learned of Joshua Long's talent, we also found Aaron Brinkley.
Brinkley is a 7-year-old, second-grade prodigy. When he was just a toddler, his parents knew he had a gift when he turned his toys into a drum set and it sounded good.
“He would look for certain sounds. He would look for that bass sound and the sound of the cymbals. He would find toys to make that sound for him,” said Aaron Brinkley Sr.
Aaron Jr. said it was Barney, the purple dinosaur, that hooked him on drums. He would watch and play right along.
“I watched it all the time and then I thought about it and then I used to play with my toys and try to keep the beat with him,” Aaron said.
That’s when his parents knew Aaron had to have lessons, though there was one problem: he was 4 years old.
“She called originally and wanted to know if I taught 4-year-olds how to play the drums,” Winters said. “And I said ‘No, that’s a little too young. Come back in a couple of years.'"
But the Brinkleys wouldn't give up and convinced Winters to listen just once.
“My jaw dropped a few times, and I said ‘Ma’am, we're going to sign him up tonight,’” Winters explained.
Teacher and student have now been together for three years. At an early recital, Winters knew early he was teaching something special.
“People are standing on chairs, because they couldn't believe it. They couldn't see him, first of all, because all you saw was the top of his head over the drum set, but you could hear him,” Winters explained.
He said Aaron could walk down Bourbon Street and sit in with anybody. It’s a talent his parents knew was always there.
“He's really that good. He's phenomenal. He makes me cry every time I watch him,” his dad says.
Aaron and Joey have only met a couple of times. They each have something you can't buy: a pure, natural, God-given talent to play the drums.
But they also have something you can't teach, either: an unstoppable desire to be the best.
“With parents like that and the talent they have, the sky is the limit,” Winters said. “Whatever they want to do, either one of those could do it.”
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