HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Aunts, uncles and four-part harmony booming through the thin walls of my bedroom when I was a young boy in the Forties. My mother played piano by ear and I grew up Hearing those wonderful old Tin Pan Ally tunes. At about 14 I sold my coin collection and bought a Kay bass at one of the Seattle shops on first Avenue. My initial experiences as a paid musician was as as a bass player. I remember my first paid gig was with the Chuck Heatley Orchestra at the University of Puget Sound. I was15. It wasn’t long before I started my own band and quickly realized that if I was going to be a bandleader it would be better for me to be working out front as a horn player, so I went back to the First Avenue hock shops and found a tenor sax. I was fortunate to dial myself in for lessons with Johnny Jesson who was, at that time, Seattle’s preeminent teacher of reed instruments. It wasn’t long before I purchased a brand new Selmer alto sax, and a Selmer clarinet as well. I learned quickly and was able to play the charts I was buying during my sophomore year in high school. Every dollar that I could get my hands on went for purchasing big band orchestrations at Ted Brown music. By the time I graduated from high school I had quite a library and was working High School and college Proms and Homecomings regularly with my band.