I Believe In Professionalism, But Playing Is

New Orleans Had A Great Tradition Of Celebration. Opera, Military Marching Bands, Folk Music, The Blues, Different Types Of Church Music, Ragtime, Echoes Of Traditional African Drumming, And All Of The Dance Styles That Went With This Music Could Be Heard And Seen Throughout The City. When All Of These Kinds Of Music Blended Into One, Jazz Was Born.

There's The Tradition In Jazz Of Having The “battle Of The Bands” And You Do Not Want To Get Your Head Cut When You're Playing.

You Can Reach A Situation Where Things Of Intelligence And Refinement And Culture Can Be Considered Elite, And Things That Are Crass And Ignorant Can Be Considered To Be Real And Of The People. And When You Begin To Have The Mass Of Populus Striving For Something That's Not Worth Striving For, Then Tremendous Amounts Of Energy Go Into...the Maintenance Of That Which Is Worthless.

The History Of Jazz Lets Us Know That This Period In Our History Is Not The Only Period We've Come Through Together. If We Truly Understood The History Of Our National Arts, We'd Know That We Have Mutual Aspirations, A Shared History, In Good Times And Bad.

I Got My First Trumpet When I Was Six Years Old, From Al Hirt. My Father Was Playing In Al Hirt's Band At That Time.