EddieTaylorInterview

Rack 'em up with

Eddie Taylor, part 1

Widely acclaimed as the premier Bank Pool player of all time, many consider Eddie Taylor one of the very best One Pocket players of all time as well. And before his eyesight began to fail him, Eddie was right there in 9-Ball, too. Clearly Eddie Taylor is one of the finest all-around players ever to pick up a cue, for which he was honored in 1993 by election to the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame.

1P: Could you tell us a little about how you developed into such a great Banks and One Pocket player?

ET: My first game was pool of course, but then I got into Snooker when I was about 14 years old and I got to be a very good Snooker player, but there was no money in it. All of the money games around the South -- especially in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and a couple other states -- all the money games were on Bank Pool. That's how come I wound up playing Banks.

1P: So you followed the money...

ET: I was sixteen years old and I was playing very, very good Banks at that time. Earl Shriver and a guy they called Erie Fats -- who was a tremendous player of everything -- came to Lexington together, and that's when I wound up with Earl, which was my first inkling of One Pocket. Earl was really a top notch One Pocket player. He played everything good, but One Pocket was probably his best game. When I got with Earl Shriver, every time we didn't get any action in a little town or something, we'd play some One Pocket -- he was teaching me how to play. It was a long time before I got real comfortable with One Pocket, but the banks helped me tremendously.

1P: So when you got together with Earl you were only 16 and he was only 21, yet he was already a top One Pocket player -- so what's all this about having to be older to play good One Pocket?

ET: Right, he was already a good One Pocket player at 21. But they didn't play that game everywhere. We hustled all over the country, and we just didn't run into it at that time, except Oklahoma City was a pretty big One Pocket town. I would say it didn't get real popular until the 50's.

1P: Where do you suppose Earl learned the game since he was only 21 and already so sharp at One Pocket?

ET: I don't really know. I think he might have learned it from around Hubert Cokes or somebody like that. Cokes was one of the early, early players. I never had anyone ask that question before. I don't know exactly where he learned it, because they didn't hardly play it in the South. It was kind of like finding Straight Pool in the South -- you could drive all over for six months to a year and you'd never see a Straight Pool game. They played 9-Ball of course, but mostly they played Rotation. It was during the depression, and most of the time I never had enough money to play but one or two games, so you didn't want to play a game where somebody might luck out on you.

1P: Who were some of the other players that helped build your One Pocket game?

ET: The next guy that helped my One Pocket game, who was also from the Washington DC area, was Johnny 'Rags' Fitzpatrick. The first time, we played 9-8 at my hometown -- this was in the 40's -- we played for $400 a game and we played for two weeks, and I think either he won one game or I won one game -- I don't remember which.

1P: So at that time he was giving you a ball?

ET: Yes, 9-8, but at Banks I gave him a ball and beat him. But he was a very good player and a very good player to play with. He was a gentleman and played high, too. He stayed with me for six months until his mother called and said the government wanted to see him to go into the service. But he was a tip-top player.

Another early player was Hayden Lingo. He came to Knoxville and played John R. Cook and John R. gave Lingo the 1-2-3-4-5 playing Rotation and broke Lingo because Lingo was kind of stalling, and you know any good player could run out from the 5-Ball no problem. He came back a little bit later and beat John R. of course, playing even. That was my first inkling of Hayden Lingo. I never did play Lingo for money, but he was one of the top early One Pocket players. I learned one thing from him; I learned that you don't want to get a lot of balls bunched up along the rail above your pocket because you'll block your long banks. You want to keep those balls out of your way so you can make the long banks. I had heard so many great things about him, and when I practiced with him I could see why.

1P: It seems like Hayden Lingo got around a lot -- I know he was in Boston at one point.

ET: The time I was around him for a couple of weeks was like 1950 or '51 -- I think I had a '50 Buick.

1P: Considering your ability to make long banks, did you tend to push the balls up table early in a game?

ET: Yes, I also did that if I could, anytime it was a real tough game.

1P: Who were some of the other strong One Pocket players you bumped into?

ET: Another guy was Don Decoy; did you ever hear anything about him?

1P: Yes, I have heard of him, I understand he died in a car crash.

ET: That's right, but he was a very, very good player -- at every game, too. Another guy you might have heard of was Bob Roberts, from California.

1P: 'Big Nose' Roberts...

ET: That's right. He wound up committing suicide. He got some kind of bad problem with his back and he couldn't play pool. Well I played him a couple of times -- we won't go into it -- but I came out a little ahead.

Anyhow, those, and there was probably two or three more that I've been trying to think of... Of course Ronnie Allen was a tip-top player, no question about that. He was giving everybody two or three balls -- well not everybody -- but most everybody.

Ronnie Allen, Eddie Taylor & Marshall

'Squirrel' Carpenter

1P: In the early sixties.

ET: Yeah. He won the One Pocket tournament in 1962 in San Francisco -- I think there were about 14-15 in it -- and he won that. I think I finished like third, and we played a little after that, but that's neither here nor there. Ed Kelley was another very good One Pocket player. That pretty much settles it up as far as the real good players that I can remember.

1P: Did you ever play Eugene 'Clem' Metz?

ET: The first time I played Clem was in my hometown and I didn't know him. I played him either 8-6 or 9-7 and I had him down to his last dollar -- his last game -- but I didn't know that and I had to quit because I was having a bad problem with my left eye and left side of my nose. It was killing me, and I had to get somebody to take me home and put scalding towels on it. Anyhow, he told me this later, 'I only had one shell left.' But the next day he got even and I quit. I wanted to change the game, but he didn't want to change the game.

The next time we played, I had quit playing for 10 or 11 months. He came in and they called me and I said 'I can't play; I haven't been playing.' But I finally played and he beat me out of a couple of hundred dollars -- but that didn't matter at all. The next time I saw him was in Johnston City when the tournament was getting ready and all the action was going on. I hustled him to play some for a hundred or two but he wouldn't play, but we became good friends after that.

1P: How about Marcel Camp, did you ever play him?

ET: Oh I knew Marcel real well. He came to my hometown and put on a show, and he was the US Snooker Champion at that time, and I played him an exhibition. We played two out of three and he beat me of course. At that time, Snooker was pretty much my best game other than Banks.

1P: He was a good One Pocket player, too, wasn't he?

ET: We played Banks after the exhibition. The guy that owned the poolroom had given me the key to his place so we could get in there and play -- they closed at eleven o'clock. I was 3 or 4 games ahead when this policeman -- I guess he heard the balls -- banged on the door and we had to let him in, and he stopped us from playing. Marcel was ahead of me 6-1 in that last game. I said, 'Well the only thing I can do is tomorrow I'll give you 6 balls and I'll leave you a long shot like it was. That's the best I can do.' Anyhow I broke him the next day and it came out in the paper, 'Mr. Taylor and Mr. Camp played a very close exhibition match last night and the next day Mr. Taylor and Mr. Camp engaged in some Bank Pool and Mr. Taylor pocketed the coin.' I'll never forget that as long as I live.

1P: In the newspaper!

ET: But Camp and I ended up good friends; I knew him well.

1P: So you were already near the top of your game by about 1940?

ET: Yeah, when I was about seventeen, there was a guy from Atlanta that I ran into that gave me the fifteen ball playing Rotation and he broke me -- probably beat me out of thirty dollars or something like that. Then a few years later I had about three thousand in my pocket, and these three guys -- who all had a pocket full of money -- said they had this guy who would play anybody 9-ball. They caught up with me in Jacksonville, Florida, so I asked them to put up a thousand dollars, and I'd put up the money when I got there. So I checked out of the hotel and drove all the way up to this town in Georgia -- eighty miles. When I got there, they hadn't put up the money, but they got their player, and it was the guy who had broke me two or three years before in Atlanta.

I would say this, in the early 1940's I would have played anybody on this earth 9-ball, one shot push-out. Where I could push-out, I'd push-out to a bank, and a lot of good players found out they didn't want to shoot it, but they didn't want to give it to me!

When I saw who it was, I was going to try to get some odds, but he said 'Oh no, I've heard all about you Eddie.' But now, those three guys want to bet but he won't let 'em. He wouldn't let 'em do anything but play for twenty dollars a game, and besides that he says, 'I'll play you some when the sun goes down.' I never heard that one before! I wasn't going to play, I got so mad that he wouldn't let them bet. They couldn't even bet on the side 'cuz the guy wouldn't let 'em. Anyway, we did play, and he won the toss and he broke the balls and he ran out, and broke the balls and ran out, and broke the balls and ran out; and he did that five straight games. The sixth game he made one on the break but he couldn't see the object ball so he had to kick, because we were playing shoot to hit the ball -- which I didn't like either, but he wouldn't play no other way -- so he kicked and hit the ball, but ended up leaving me a shot. Well I ran out that rack and then broke and ran out, and broke and ran out and broke and ran out, six in a row to go ahead and he quit. I cussed him out I was so mad; I had gone to all this trouble to drive up there. I said, 'You mean to tell me you're gonna quit? You never even missed a ball!' His name was Buck Bozeman, and he was a very, very good player, that for some reason you never heard so much about.

1P: For a guy that just ran five racks to quit on you, that's playing pretty strong! You went to the very first Johnston City event, didn't you?

ET: Yes, what happened was, I was in Cincinnati and I only had about forty dollars in my pocket and Squirrel [Marshall 'Squirrel' Carpenter] called me and said, 'Why don't you come over. There's a lot of players over here; you can get some action.' I said, 'Squirrel, I really don't have any money.' And he said, 'Oh, I've got plenty of money for you to play with.' So I said, okay, I'll come on over. Well I got in there at two o'clock in the morning and they had this one table in the back of the J&J Ranch, and Squirrel was shooting a long shot off of the end rail and they're betting two hundred a pop on it. I said if he ever missed that twice he's dead, and he did miss it twice, in fact he missed it three times, but he ended up beating Earl out of twelve hundred. From there on I had plenty of money to play with, but nobody would play me.

I'll always say this, Squirrel shot better off the rail than anybody I ever saw play pool in my life. I played him one time 9 to 7 or 10 to 8 -- this was a long time ago -- and I kept leaving him shots from off the rail where if he missed, I'm out. But he kept making 'em! I've always said he was the greatest player off the rail. He could even raise up his stick and he would never jump the table or anything.

Finally I wound up playing this guy -- a banker from Du Quion -- I can't remember his name. First, I played him One Pocket 10 to 5. He said nobody ever beat him playing 10 to 5, but I beat him out of two or three thousand. Then I played him one-handed to his two at Banks, and beat him out of another two or three thousand -- not the same day -- and he told George Jansco, 'You know, it's worth a hundred dollars a game to see that son-of-a-bitch shoot with one hand.'

At that time I was playing very, very, very good one-handed. I'd have played anybody in the world one-handed One Pocket or Banks. It was between me and Earl supposedly for the top one-handed One Pocket players.

One time, in Hot Springs Earl and I played for three hundred a game -- he was getting staked -- and he beat me five games in a row. The guy that was my backer at home was Charlie Brooks, a real high bookmaker, and he said, 'What do you think, Eddie?' I said, 'It don't mean a thing.' The money was half mine anyway that we were playing for 'cuz I had a pocket full of money. So he said, 'Well why don't you play him some for five.' And I said, 'I think that's a good idea.' So I said, 'You want to play for five, Earl?' And he said, 'Yeah', and we started playing for five and I beat him six in a row. That shows you how things go...

1P: So you and Earl both traveled together and matched up against each other.

ET: Oh, that didn't matter at all to Earl. He was always after me because I was doing so well, but it always backfired. Another time he was backing a player against me where I got the break and the first shot and I was playing him 9 to 3, but I learned how to do that, so I even got him on that.

1P: Do you remember your "spectacular run of 9 and out" against Lassiter to win the '64 Johnston City All-Around title?

ET: What happened was, the score was 2-2 in games and he had me 7-0 in the next game and I mean, I performed a miracle to win. He had his game ball in the hole, and I managed to run four balls until I had this hard, hard cross corner bank. I never could follow his ball in because there was this ball sticking out over the line that he would have shot in, and that's the one that I banked and went around the table and then was able to follow it in. I finally won that game -- boy I'm telling you, that was a tough game. And then the very next game I left the cue ball in his pocket and he kicked. He did have what looked like a dead ball, but he didn't even hit that ball. He hit another ball that he didn't even mean to hit and shit it in and ran eight and out on me. I said, 'Oh my God!' Boy that was a heartbreaker there, because he really lucked out -- he didn't hit the right ball and still got away with it! Then it was my break and it was 3-3 -- and I know you've seen this -- the cue ball kissed off of a ball that had gotten down to the foot rail and it kind of double-kissed the cue ball into the pocket. He didn't have a shot that was any good though, even though I scratched on the break. So we dickered a couple of shots back and forth, and then he tried to bank a ball cross corner, but I had fixed it so I didn't think he could do it because of a kiss. Sure enough it did kiss, and when it did that left me a little opening where I could make a ball and break up the balls, and that's how I got the nine and out.

Clipping from Chalk Up! reporting results

from the 1964 Johnston City 'All Round'

1P: So you trapped him on a bank that was a kiss.

ET: Yeah, I never said it like that, but that's actually what happened.

1P: But that was the way you defended against the bank -- you left it so it was a kiss.

ET: Yeah, but all-in-all Lassiter turned out to be a very good One Pocket player.

1P: Before Johnston City, where did you find the most One Pocket?

ET: There was a lot of One Pocket played around Hot Springs, Arkansas. There was a guy from Little Rock -- oh, what's his name [later recalled as Vernon Brown]; hell I traveled with him quite a bit to start with -- anyway, we told everybody everywhere we went that there was going to be plenty of action in Hot Springs on pool, and sure enough, quite a few came. We had got this guy to put up a table upstairs. He had a poolroom, but he had to close it at eleven o'clock. So he bought this table -- a 4-1/2x9 -- and he cleaned up a room upstairs, and put this table and some chairs up there and started charging five dollars a night just to get up there to get in on the action. The gambling was kind of closed down in Hot Springs at that time so all of the gamblers were coming up there and betting on the games. They charged $10 an hour for the table and the winner paid for the pool. There were no games for under a hundred; most of them were for two or three hundred a game. There were a lot great players; people like Puckett -- a bunch of guys I can't remember -- and all the games were One Pocket. Cokes was there; Fats was there; Shriver was there. And the next year, my gosh, there was probably 75 people -- players from all over the country. I'm talking about champions! I almost thought of the name of another player -- it was the name of a town in Oklahoma...

Now there was a funny thing happened out there in Fort Worth. Earl happened to be there when this came about. I had tried to find UJ Puckett several times because I wanted to play him, but I just missed him in several towns. Now I sneaked in there in Fort Worth -- I walked in there -- and Puckett comes over to me. I had never seen him in my life -- I'd heard about him of course. He comes over to me and says, 'Well, Taylor, there ain't no need of you stalling around, if you want to play some 9-ball then get your stick.' Puckett wanted to play me some 9-ball for fifty a game. I said okay, so we started playing. I was going to try to sneak around a little, but I couldn't do no sneaking because there was too many there that knew me.

They're all up on this little alcove watching, and what happened was, we had played three or four games or something like that, and Puckett missed a 9-ball. And he had been bulldozing me. So I said, 'Well, I didn't believe it, what everybody told me; I really didn't believe it.' He said, 'What's that; what's that?" I said, 'Well they told me you were the biggest dog in the game.' Well everybody really cracked up laughing when I said that, but I wound up beating Puckett out of nine hundred. There was a restaurant next door and afterwards I took all of them over for a steak, and Puckett sat down next to me and says, 'Oh, I'm sorry Taylor, I didn't mean all that...' So me and Puckett wound up being real good friends.

1P: Eufaula?

ET: Yeah, 'Eufaula' [Glen Womack]! He gave me a ball and I beat him out of quite a bit of money. That came about because a while earlier, back in Fort Worth, Texas, I had played Eufaula 9-ball and beat him out of six hundred, so he wanted to play me One Pocket. So I played him One Pocket and he beat me out of four hundred. So then I got a ball off him in Hot Springs, and of course I did pretty well.

BCA Hall of Fame members Jimmy Caras,

'Cowboy' Jimmy Moore, 'Fats' and Eddie

1P: Eddie, I notice that so many players after you beat them -- even if you hustled them to beat them -- yet you end up becoming real good friends with them.

ET: Well I usually got along well with everybody after I did beat them. Of course I didn't always win.

1P: It seems like if you beat somebody out of pretty good money, you often took them out to dinner afterwards.

ET: I took Marcel Camp, and the fellow that was with him -- he was from up your way, Chick Seaback -- I took them both over to a friend of mine's house and we all got drunk. That's a true story! That's what happened.

1P: Do you have any advice for players trying to improve their One Pocket game?

ET: I try to tell everybody, anytime you are banking an object ball close to the cushion, you don't draw the ball. If you draw the ball, you'll get a kiss. I remember showing this shot to several of the guys in Tulsa when I was guest of honor there. Cory Deuel was there and he said, 'That's impossible, Eddie, how are you going to keep from kissing that ball?' So I said, 'You just have to forget about that'. So I set it up and I shot it one-handed and made it, and he said 'How in the hell do you not kiss that ball?' So I showed him how, and finally he made it and said, 'I see why they call you the greatest bank pool player.'

I used to make that shot four out of five times. Now I can't make it anymore but I get Buddy Hall to shoot it. I set it up and he shoots it. He knows how 'cuz I showed him how to do it. Of course he makes it every time, like I used to when I could see.

1P: Was Buddy a player that you kind of taught?

ET: Well, not really, but he was working for Red Box when I moved down here. At that time Buddy Hall was really playing terrific 9-ball, and he was always wanting to have me practice with him, but I said, 'Buddy, I'm not really much of a practicer.' But anyhow I did practice with him a bit.

1P: He turned into a heck of a One Pocket player, too.

ET: Yeah, he said I helped him out quite a bit, especially with his One Pocket. We were in Washington DC at some kind of tournament and Buddy offered to play anybody One Pocket -- I mean anybody -- as long as I would coach him. He wasn't even considered a One Pocket player at that time, but nobody would play him!

Luther Lassiter and Eddie Taylor

1P: So you helped him out with his Banks and his One Pocket.

ET: Yeah, he always tells everybody that. Actually Buddy is a lot like Lassiter, that wasn't supposed to be a One Pocket player, but Lassiter became a real good One Pocket player. He wasn't to start with, but he got so he was a very good One Pocket player. I had a hell of a time with him.

1P: And like you weren't supposed to be a Straight Pool player...

ET: Well, it's like Beenie [Bill 'Weenie Beenie' Staton] said, 'If Eddie had born in NYC there'd have been a lot of Straight Pool players leaving.' Actually, when they finally invited me to the World's tournament in NY -- I told my wife, 'They'll probably need some towels to wipe up the blood.' Anyhow, Irving Crane was telling me this story. I had won one match and lost five and Crane said that he and Lassiter were talking to the promoter, and the promoter said, 'Hey, I thought this Taylor was supposed to be a hell of a player.' Crane told me that Lassiter spoke up and said, 'Don't worry about Taylor; when the smoke clears, Taylor will be there.' I won my last eight in a row, so I finished 9-5. I would have finished third or forth -- I finished seventh -- but I didn't have any balls in those five games that I lost.

1P: Did you ever play Bugs?

ET: The first time I played Bugs he came to Washington when I was kind of hanging around the Guys and Dolls, but I was hardly picking up a cue at that time. Beenie used to come over and say, 'Come on, I'll play you Straight Pool a hundred points for three hundred.' And I'd say, 'Well let me hit a ball or two.' But he'd say, 'No, no, no if you hit one ball there's no game.' So when Bugs came, we played four hundred dollars a game. The first day we played about six hours and broke about even, and I was really beat because I hadn't been playing. So I said, 'We can play some more tomorrow; but I got to quit.' The next day we started again and I beat him out of twenty-eight hundred, and I'll never forget the last shot as long as I live. It was a long shot and the ball was way down on the other end of the table maybe three or four inches off the end rail. I couldn't play safe so I just stood up and hit it and it just flew in the hole, and that's when the backers all quit.

Another time we played, I had gone to this place in Ohio where they were having a bank pool tournament and I didn't get into it because my eyesight was haywire at that time, but I was kind of booking the games. Well I tried to play Bugs, but if you had seen me you would have laughed because of the way I was playing -- I just wasn't seeing right. He beat me one game and I said, 'I got to quit.'

Bill 'Weenie Beenie' Staton with Eddie

1P: You mentioned playing one handed; there was a guy from the Boston area named Andrew St. Jean who was supposed to be a strong one-handed player.

ET: I didn't know him, but you know who told me that he was a tremendous one-handed player? Fats told me, and another guy named Dayton Omstead -- and Dayton was a pretty damn good three-cushion billiards player. He told me that he played St. Jean even up, and he was running three and four and going five rails and whatever, playing one handed. Of course he didn't play Banks because they didn't play Banks in that part of the country. I never got to meet him, but I'd have gone against him. At one time I don't think anybody could have beat me playing one-handed One Pocket or one-handed Banks.

1P: It sure does sound like you were a very strong one-handed player...

ET: If you ever talk to Mike Massey, the trick-shot player -- he was from a little town just outside Knoxville -- he used to come watch me play. We used to play partners a lot and if you got eight by yourself, you collected from everybody. I had to play one-handed, and this was with the best players in Knoxville, and I usually won -- I don't remember actually losing -- I won pretty regularly. Mike says 'I remember seeing you bank those balls 6 or 7 at a time one-handed.'

One time with Titanic Thompson -- I'm sure you've heard of him -- well Ti was in town and he saw me playing a guy that was a bookmaker playing for four hundred dollars a game, playing him 8-5 one pocket and I was playing one-handed with no tip on my cue. Now what happened was, I drew the ball about 6-7 inches with no tip, one-handed. So he said 'They'll be no more of that', and he got a glass of water and I had to dip the stick in the water each time before I shot, but I still beat him out of four thousand. Well Titanic saw that and said, 'That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life!'

I first went to San Francisco in 1953 because a guy had told me Jimmy Moore was in the World Tournament there, at the Downtown Bowl. So when I got out there naturally I don't know where I'm going and I'm on this one-way street, so I ask a guy at a newsstand on the corner, 'Pardon me sir, but do you know where the Downtown Bowl is?' He said, 'Yeah, I sure do. You go up here about six blocks to Taylor...' And I'm thinking does this guy know me or what? And then he said, 'You take a left, and you'll see a pharmacy, Eddie & Taylor Pharmacy.' And I'm thinking this guy is full of shit, he's just kidding me, but I drove up there and took a left and sure enough I see the sign Eddy & Taylor pharmacy. Just as you turn to the right there was a motel called the Olympia Hotel. When I checked into the hotel -- they used to put cards in the drawer that you could send. Now on these cards it said Olympia Hotel, corner of Eddy & Taylor -- E-d-d-y -- San Francisco. I must have sent about 30-40 of them to people I knew!

The second night I was there I played a guy from Chicago that owned a bar on the main street, and they said he was a pretty good player. I played him one-handed and beat him out of six thousand.

1P: That was at One Pocket?

ET: Yeah, my one-handed to his two. I beat him five games ahead and when I was going over to pay the tab he asked 'How much are you winner, Taylor?' And I said, 'Eight hundred,' because I was thinking I was four games winner. So he said, 'I'll play you one for eight.' And I said, 'Get it up.' We played for the eight and I won and I said, 'I guess you want to play for the sixteen.' And he said, 'F**k you, Taylor, I'll play you some for five.' So I wound up beating him out of six thousand.

At the same time these guys that were playing in the World's Tournament -- there were twelve of them -- were playing for the top prize of $2500. Mosconi won it and got $500 extra for high run.

1P: So you made twice what they did, playing one-handed.

ET: That's what I'm saying; I'm sure those guys that were watching this had their mouths watering. It's such a shame that pool has always been so cheap. For some reason -- they'll put pigeons, horseshoes and anything in the world that you can think of in the paper, but not billiards and pool. It's really pitiful, because pool is a hell of a sport. I mean it takes some real finesse. Pool is not an easy game. I won the Stardust, which was eight thousand and something, and they had in the write up 'The largest prize of all time.' That was 1967. It's not much better than that today. It's really pathetic. I feel so sorry for those players.

Anyhow I think I've done enough talking to last a while.

1P: Well, thank you very much; it's been very nice talking to you, Eddie.

ET: Very nice talking to you, buddy, and give my best to your wife Sue.

Eddie with his late wife Violet

Click here to read Part 2 of Eddie Taylor's interview

On Fats, Mosconi, Frankie Boughton and others

If you would like to comment on this article, or add your own Eddie Taylor story, you can Contact Us, or visit the OnePocket.org Message Board. If you have not already signed up, you will need to register in order to post a message.

About OnePocket.org

Dedicated to the game of One Pocket

Register your support for the game of One Pocket by signing up to join OnePocket.org. It's free, it's easy, and your privacy is assured. All you need is a valid email address.