He wore a perfect suit, a Roswell sort of suit. But I was wearing a hat with a feather in it. I was holding a trombone. JFK was going somewhere, the two men following him thought he was going somewhere, but I was wearing a hat with a feather in it. So I took my hat off.
Somebody does that in a marching band and it's like a bomb going off.
My career was over. Maybe the president got to wear that suit, but I was not going to wear that hat. Heroin looked good. King had a fine Tennessee Williams lisp and an ultra-suede, evidently narcotic cadence. So I joined the Navy.