He's playing your song

submitted photo-- Sgt. Pete Quinlan, retired, performs.

You can call him Sergeant Pete -- that is, if you're not one of his students. Retired Sgt. Peter Quinlan has something of a secret life. By day he's a by-the-book sergeant instructing JROTC cadets at Nevada High School and coaches the Flying Tigers drill team. By night he can be a fast-talking disc jockey playing music, cracking jokes and warming up the crowd.

"It's my secret identity," Quinlan said. "It's kind of funny how I got that. I used to be sort of a jack-of-all-trades and I played harmonica blues, my dad was a blues player, one day on stage Katie Colmer, she came into town and she got me up on stage and Marcia Bozarth started taking pictures and saying, 'Oh man, you're famous, we've got to give you a name.' Of course she didn't understand Air Force names and she started calling me Sergeant Pete. She just kept calling me that. As long as my kids don't call me that, I'm all right."

Not content to just play the music, Quinlan also announces for the El Dorado Springs radio station on occasion, where he's been quizzed about the nickname.

"I announce over there sometimes for the baseball games," Quinlan said. "The regular announcer, Mike Morlan, he's a retired major in the Army, and he said, 'You let them call you that over there at the ROTC?' and I said 'No, I wouldn't let my kids call me by my first name.' He said 'I know the military has gotten lax but that's terrible.'"

Quinlan spent 20 years in the Air Force and that is where he picked up his musical sideline.

"I've been doing this since back in the vinyl days of the late '70s or early '80s," Quinlan said. "Back then you had to have several people looking up songs because you had all these records to look through when someone requested a song and that's what I did. There was a microphone there, but it wasn't being used, so I picked it up and that was the start."

Quinlan has come a long way since his start with vinyl records. Now instead of hauling hundreds of pounds of records around all he needs to store the thousands of songs he has available is a computer.

"I've been doing the digital for some time now," Quinlan said. "What happened is the club had their stuff and I started doing it and people started hiring me. They'd say, "Hey, saw you at the country club there." and I went and bought my equipment, of course now everything is digital. I have a laptop with 40,000 songs, it's got a great system on there."

The versatility of the system surprises some of his customers.

"What's really surprising to the older people, they just don't understand it," Quinlan said.

"One of the nights I did a big band night over there, I haven't done it in awhile and there was a group over there, an older group, that was really into big bands. They wrote out a list of songs, they just made a huge list, probably a hundred songs on there. Of course with the computer you can save a playlist and it surprises them how I can remember all their favorite songs. I have the playlist every time, it's Big Bands."

In addition to a saved playlist the computerized system also allows Quinlan to quickly find any song on it.

"Computers are amazing. Of the 40,000 songs you can come up to me and say do you have any Beatles songs or do you know this song and I can just type it in and it'll find it."

Quinlan is thinking of expanding his operation to include karaoke.

"They want me to do karaoke and I've looked into it," Quinlan said. "It's a combination of files and you're talking extra screens for the singers. I may get into it but this is really just a hobby for me."

Quinlan has played all over the area, not just in El Dorado Springs. Right now he said he seems to be in wedding season.

"I've played in Nevada some, but really, all over," Quinlan said. "Down in Joplin and Neosho, here in El Dorado. I have four weddings lined up in April and May. I'm busy."

Quinlan's busy schedule includes much more than just weddings. Friday, April 4, at Capone's Italian Eatery and Lounge in El Dorado Springs, Quinlan will perform, complete with film of the Nevada Junior ROTC Flying Tigers Drill Team.