I really had my roots in the swing era of music.
I remember all the excitement about Benny Goodman's
Sing, Sing, Sing when it came out.
And we lived in Scarsdale,
which was only a stone's throw
away from the Glen Isle Casino,
where a lot of the big
bands used to play.
Glenn Miller more or less got his big start there.
And I just remember vividly the excitement of
that era of music.
I was really a swing nut by the time I was about 10 or 11
years old.
So by the time I started playing,
which was I guess when I was 13,
I was very much immersed
in the swing era.
And my particular favorite was naturally,
I guess,
Benny Goodman.
He
was the idol of most clarinet players in those days,
unless you happened to prefer Artie
Shaw.
And that was...
Artie Shaw came along and you either
had to be in one camp or another.
Well, I was definitely in the Goodman camp.
Louis Armstrong was a name to me.
It's somebody that I would notice would be playing at a
theater,
but I really knew nothing about his music.
I learned about Louis's music through
the reissue of the early Hot Fives.
And this was one of the first jazz reissues by Columbia
Records around 1940,
41. And here was this New Orleans music circa 1925. And it made
no sense to me whatsoever.
It was just a complete gobbledygook.
It was so complex with the
clarinet and the trombone and the trumpet seemed to
be all playing different melodies at the same time.
Actually,
much more complex music than the swing music that I was used to.
But I stuck with it and
I began to realize that Louis Armstrong was something very special.
And I've never gotten
over that feeling.