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Coming from a classical background and hearing Clifford Brown play it emphasized his trumpet brilliance, his technique and his articulation, similar to the study of articulation in classical and I found it fascinating. He set the bar so high. Every day I try to achieve the brilliance of Clifford.

I really wanted to play the drums but my mother said “absolutely no drums in this house” (there were several siblings who made “enough noise”). So one day my older brother came home from school with a shiny new trombone because he had joined the band and I knew that I had to have one too! I didn’t really know what it was but I didn’t stop asking until I got one. Growing up with an older brother, I had to have everything he had and in this case it was a trombone!

One of the challenges can be defining the heart of the song. There are so many rewards… exchanging ideas and building on them together, when one person’s focus is waning, the other can inspire with a new idea.

There are two ways to deal with racism in music. One is to channel your anger into the music and be a reporter of your culture. Often you are preaching to the choir. If the person who is a racist is not a fan of your music, then your anger is not going to matter to them. If a racist likes your music, I have a feeling they can turn it off.

In the fall of 2015, I was talking to my co-author, Dave Lisik, about the fact that the band’s 50th anniversary was approaching. I said that somebody should put together a web site that featured the band’s history, personnel, discography, photos, etc.

Dave said, “Why just a web site? We should put together a book with all of that in it.” I was in the middle of finishing up another book project and thought there was no way I would have the energy to jump right into another project. I also thought that there might be too many moving parts and too many people that we would have to rely upon to get something like this done. But luckily, Dave was persistent and kept asking me until I agreed to do it.