Bill Hice has lived life by the numbers, both musical and mathematical.
Hice, 84, has played gigs all over Arkansas and beyond, meeting some of the biggest names of the '60s and '70s, but he has made a career out of income tax preparation.
It all began with a performance at Morrilton High School when he was 15.
Two of his friends were guitarists.
"They played at a high school assembly and all the girls just went crazy over them," he says. "I grabbed them when they were through and said, 'You're going to have to teach me to play guitar.'"
Hice's friends said they didn't need another guitar player. They needed someone to play bass.
"I didn't even know what one was," Hice says. "I could probably find middle C on a piano and that was about it."
He ordered a $170 bass from Sears Roebuck, with a $13 down payment and his mother's co-signature on a $15 a month payment plan.
He learned, and they started playing in night clubs, VFW huts and the Rialto Theater.
"All the girls were taken by the time we got through playing and put up our equipment, so that didn't work out," he says. "But I played in probably every honky-tonk in the state of Arkansas, except for one."
In doing so, he gained fodder for a lifetime of stories.
For instance, he and his bandmates crammed into his father's 1954 Ford -- a box strapped on top to hold their gear -- for road trips to play music.
"There was a kid that hitchhiked from Benton who wanted to go with us," he says. "I told him we didn't have room for a piano player."
A couple of years later, Hice's friend told him to play a number on the jukebox. He liked the song and asked who it was.
"He said, 'Remember that piano player you wouldn't take with us? His name was Charlie Rich,'" Hice says.
Hice and his band played with Roy Orbison and his band in Morrilton, after the latter returned from gigs in Russellville or Conway.
"They would get back around midnight and we would go out there and jam with them until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning," he says. "I missed two weeks of school because I couldn't get awake after we played all night."
Hice's father was the chief of police in Morrilton.
"Then in '53, he went to the courthouse and he was tax assessor for county for some 20 or 25 years," he says. "I finished out his last term as tax assessor because he wanted to retire."
Hice was working for a bank in Dardanelle then.
He graduated from Morrilton High School in 1956 and joined the Air Force.
"I was in the Air Force for three years, 11 months, 22 days, six hours, 32 minutes and 14 seconds," he says. "I loved every minute of it ... which ain't true."
Hice was stationed in England. He and four other airmen formed a band and played on other bases in the area, when he wasn't working in the financial services division of the comptroller's office.
"That's what made me decide to go back to college when I got out of the Air Force and get me a degree in accounting, which I did," he says.
He started at Arkansas Polytechnic College, now Arkansas Tech University, in 1960.
He didn't consider a music major.
"We never could make enough money to live on playing music," he says.
The memories he has made, though, are priceless.
The drummer in Hice's band gave impromptu lessons to a musician who later drummed for Conway Twitty, Hice says. And Jerry Lee Lewis died owing him the $40 promised to each band member who played at a dance in the student union at Tech.
"While we were getting our equipment all set up he scratched gravel in the parking lot and was gone," Hice says.
One summer during college, Hice and his band took a road trip to New Jersey. They were told they were to play country at one club and to rock 'n' roll at another.
"We ended up playing at a club around Lodi, N.J., where Giants stadium is now, every Friday and Saturday night all that summer for $17.50 a night," he says.
They also played at Asbury Park in New Jersey, before a crowd of 8,500.
"My knees got to knocking," he says. "I had never played for that big of a crowd before in my life."
Hice watched Elvis at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock, with Red Foley opening. He also saw Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley there.
"They were coming through Little Rock pretty regular back then," he says. "We were playing, too, and we just wanted to see all the different types of music they were doing."
Hice still does taxes, and he still plays music.
"I've done it so long it's just a part of me," he says.
In hindsight, he considers himself lucky to have experienced musical history.
"We just thought it was normal back then," he says. "But there were some good times."
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