Jazz club
At fourteen, he was influenced by the jazz and Latin music radio shows of Gene Norman over KFI and Chico Sesma respectively on radio station KALI. Roger recalls going to Gene Norman's concerts at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium to see Erroll Garner, Miles Davis with John Coltrane and the "West Coast jazz" sounds of Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars, Shorty Rogers and the Giants and the Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker Quartet. Gene Norman also owned "The Crescendo" Jazz club on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood where on his fourteenth birthday Roger met vibraphonist Cal Tjader and the great Cuban Conguero Armando Peraza who so impressed Roger that he pleaded for Peraza to begin teaching him Afro-Cuban conga drum technique.