When I was about thirteen years old, the songs of Elvis Presley had reached the remote part of the world where I lived. We were all captivated by his music and many of my pals were given guitars to practice on by their parents. I was intrigued by all the words that were projected into my ears by his unique voice and rhythm. I saved money and bought my first record. It may have been King Creole with Dixieland Rock on the other side. I listened and listened again and wrote down very carefully the few words that I thought I recognized. I had a small pocket dictionary to help me find out what the words meant. Not easy though. In order to find the words in the book, I had to find out how to spell
them. In school I was only into my second year of learning English, so a period of trial and error followed until I broke the code. Then it became much easier, and taking down new song texts became an absorbing hobby. It gave considerable prestige among my friends to be able to say or sing the words where they mastered only the melody and a handful of half-words per song.
/Karl Hofsö
The Hofsö Method 