We had a book at home, a pictorial history of jazz by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. I was cozy and happy hidden away in my room leafing through it, looking at the photographs, reading the short bios, and falling in love with the great jazz heroes like Charles Mingus, Richard Davis, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Bunk Johnson, and Count Basie, before I knew what any of them sounded like. The trumpeters were royalty to me. When the opportunity came to play a trumpet at Bancroft, I went for it.
