As a teenager, then as a married man with a child, Dick Burnett worked extensively as a wheat thresher, logger, oil driller and oilfield tool fitter. Then in 1907 he sustained a gunshot explosion in his face while fighting off a mugger. Surgeons were unable to save his eyesight, so he resorted to support himself and his family by his music. Almost prophetically, his boss made the following statement to Burnett: "Well, you can still make it; you can make it with your music.