I DISCOVER MUSIC

I DISCOVER MUSIC

This was when my mother bought records from a record club and I would listen to them. That’s how I was introduced to Charlie Parker—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him. And all kinds of musicians.

They would send us every kind of record and that’s how I heard music. My mother loved music. And she would sing around the house. I have come to appreciate my mother more in the past few years. I realize now that it was her interest in jazz and putting us into the JazzTone Record Club that set me on the path to being a musician.

I had one year to go in elementary and the next year was junior high. That’s when, in 7th grade, the music teacher, Miss Margaret Spiller came by. She was a little lady, a good teacher. She went around the room recruiting for the band. She tested your ear. She played something on the piano to see if I could hum it. I passed that. I wanted to play sax but they only had one sax and a boy had already claimed that. So she said, “Play clarinet. It will be easier to play sax if you know how to play clarinet.”

It turned out to be true. And she sent a note to my mother saying I was very talented and I should take music lessons. So I took lessons at Best Music Class. I played clarinet for a year and then I played a C-melody sax (somewhere between a tenor and alto).

My teacher at Best Music arranged music for Arthur Godfrey and soon he told my mother I needed my own horn.