My friends now included musicians like Duke Ellington’s great drummer, Sonny Greer, and that great personality with the violin, Ray Nance. He’s the one who used to sing in that wild “scat” style: “Blip-blip-de-blop-de-blam-blam—” And people like Cootie Williams, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, who’d kid me about his conk—he had nothing up there but skin.
