People have an impression of New Orleans as a place where there's music always in the air. How accurate is that? Was there a lot of music around when you were growing up?

Well, it was pretty well right back then. Of course, I haven't lived in New Orleans for many years, but I think it's still relatively true. But when I was coming up there was music. It was just part of everyday life. You didn't really have to go anywhere to hear music, all you had to do was wake up and listen. You know, it's hot there, so people leave doors open and you can hear much more than you would in, say, Philadelphia, where it's insulated.

How did you happen to take up the trombone?

It was part of the New Orleans folklore. You've heard about the parades that they have there. I think I was in a parade. Not actually walking in the parade-I was riding in one of the cars. I can't remember how I got there, maybe my mother or somebody in my family belonged to the organization. These parades were created by organizations. People in those days wanted a good funeral, so working people belonged to these organizations that promised them a good burial if they paid their dues. So that's the premise behind a lot of those parades.

Now, I'm not sure this was a funeral parade. It could have been a social club parade. At any rate, I was riding in an open car and right behind my car was the band. Trombones are usually in front so the slides won't be knocking people all out of the way. Well, I turned around in this open car and saw the trombone player-I think he was the only one-and I was fascinated by this shiny instrument and this guy parading down the street playing it. I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

The parade stopped frequently for rest periods. It would stop at different homes and the musicians would go in for refreshments and come back. Well, at one of these stops I must have expressed my interest to my mother and I met the trombone player. And I found out-I just talked to him briefly-he was a very fascinating man, so I think I became enamored with his personality as well as the shininess of the horn.

Well, that was my first experience with the trombone. I played drums when I was nine years old. That was my first instrument. By the time I was 12, I was at an uncle's house and I was sort of kneeling backwards on a sofa, as kids do, and behind the sofa was this case. So I asked my uncle what was in it and he took it out and it happened to be a trombone that he had bought for one of his children, who decided that he was more interested in sports. He opened the case to let me see it and I expressed interest in it, so he said, "Well, you can take it home and see if you like it."

I did and I liked it very much. My mother found a teacher, Mr. Eddie Pearson, who was quite a great player and a great teacher. He's one of the trombone players who didn't really gain that much popularity. You'll find a lot of fine musicians who never did have much prominence other than in New Orleans.

A lot of guys in New Orleans-I didn't realize it then-depend upon tourism. So there's a lot of jobs there. And by being in a Catholic state, there are many religious celebrations. All during Mardi Gras and Easter there are balls and dances held. New Orleans had a lot of dance halls. So there was a lot of work for musicians and there still is, I believe. And most New Orleans musicians were real family guys. In fact, there are a lot of family bands where the whole family plays. So the guys didn't really have to leave New Orleans to make a living.

New Orleans is, of course, known for traditional jazz, but you were growing up during the birth of bebop. Were you caught between the two?

No, I was a bebop baby. I wasn't interested in the older New Orleans music because by the time bebop came in I was just becoming a teenager. A friend of mine had been to New York and he came back and brought these bebop records. I remember one was "Shaw 'Nuff" by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. And once he played that for us, we were all hooked, me and all my friends.

'Cause, you see, I played in a kids' band. We were all teenagers, 13 and 14, I mean, real teenagers. But we had a band, and it was a working band. I don't know how we got away with it, but we used to play dances and so forth. The leader of the band was Dooky Chase. Dooky Chase is a restaurant owner now, but he was a bandleader then. I think he was maybe a year or two older than us and his father was a businessman, so that qualified him to be the leader. He played trumpet himself. He owns one of the most famous restaurants in New Orleans now. (next column...)

So you were a professional at a very early age.

Yes, at 14. It was by accident. Not that I had gained that much proficiency, but you have to remember that World War II was still on and a lot of the professional musicians were away. A gig came up New Year's Eve of 1944 at the USO club and they needed a trombone player. What they really needed was a warm body who could at least play some trombone. So somehow my name came up and I got the gig.

In those days we used to play what were called stock arrangements. They were actually arrangements of popular tunes that the big bands had made famous. Well, I used to listen to Tommy Dorsey. One of his solos that I had memorized was "Song of India," but in this stock arrangement of it the trombone solo was actually written down. When we got to this the bandleader said, "Do you think you can handle the solo, kid?" I said, "Yeah."

So when we got to it, I sort of stuck my head in the sheet, really looked at the sheet hard like I was reading, but I had memorized it already. I must have sounded pretty good and surprised everybody, because they didn't expect too much out of me. I was a 14-year-old kid who was just filling in. But evidently I impressed them enough to get a job with the band. And I always did kind of laugh at that because they thought I was reading and I never told them any different. Although I could read. I told you, I studied with Eddie Pearson and he made sure that I could read. I wasn't just a blowing musician who depended upon his ear.

You also went on the road at an early age.

Sixteen, yeah.

How did that happen?

Well actually, I went to Alabama State College. I was sort of an egghead, and I was lucky, too, so I skipped grades and I went to college when I was 16. But I entered the semester late. My dad died when I was seven and my mother had to support me and my three sisters. When September came around, she just didn't have the money to send me then, so I might have entered a month or two later. I went to Alabama State Teachers' College because Erskine Hawkins' band had been there and the school was sort of known for that. I knew then that I wanted to be a professional musician and I went there specifically hoping that it would make me one.

Well, when I came home for the break there was a fellow, Arnold DePass-he is a trumpet player-who was going to join King Kolax's band. He told me there was an opening and he told me to check with my mother to see if she would let me go. He was a little bit older than me and he could look out for me, so my mother gave me permission. So I joined King Kolax in Port Arthur, Texas, when I was 16 and I never looked back.

I tell my students that's the name of the game. Jo Jones had a phrase that I think is great: "When you see opportunity, handcuff it." And I instinctively did that from Day One. I took advantage of the opportunity and I've sort of been doing that throughout my career. I think opportunity presents itself every day to a lot of us, but we miss a lot of opportunities that would give us exactly what we want. We're so busy, carried away with this or that or some other thing, until it knocks on the door and we don't even hear it. And it goes away.

With King Kolax's band I traveled around the Midwest and ended up stranded in Oklahoma City. Somehow I got word that there was another orchestra, a territory band, working in Oklahoma. That was Ernie Fields, but he was based in Tulsa. I don't know how, but anyway, I got an offer to join Ernie Fields' band in Tulsa.

In those days, bands got stranded often. We traveled on buses and sometimes we'd get to a town and, for whatever reason, the job that we were going to wasn't there. Sometimes there was a mix-up in booking. Other times we'd get there and the nightclub had burned down. Anyway, we were stranded in that town until the bandleader could get in touch with the head office, which was in Indianapolis, and get some money to get us rolling and moving out of there.

So during one of those stranded periods, we stayed in Oklahoma City for a little while. At first, we had two guys to a room. Then as we stayed there for a longer period and the money started running down, it was three guys to a room. After a while it was four guys to a room. It went on like that until-I think the band was about 12 guys-there were six of us sleeping and the other six were walking the streets! I was 16 or 17, so what the heck did I care?

During this time that the band was stranded, [drummer] Vernel Fournier was my roommate. I went downstairs, walked through the lobby like I was going out shopping or something, and I went around behind the building. Vernel lowered my bag out of a window on a rope and I grabbed it and ran to the bus station. That's how I got out of Oklahoma City to join Ernie Fields' band in Tulsa.

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