I was eight and my daddy said man, I want to take you out to meet an old jazz musician named Danny Barker And I want you to play in this band that he has of all young musicians and this called the Fairview Baptist Church marching band So that's fine with me out of whatever you say, you know, the daddy So we go to this lot and there's this old man in the life And he was teaching people I'd never seen anyone teach people the way he taught Because it was apparent he couldn't read music Because there was no music out there. Now this is New Orleans and it's hot. It's like 99 degrees And the humidity is 99% So you got to want to be out there to be out there And we're all out there with our horns eight nine ten years old and the old man starts talking to people he says all Okay, son you look like a drummer you're gonna play drums So the kids starts to play the drum he said now the drum is The key to learning about jazz music The key to jazz is communication Now with that left hand I want you to go boom boom boom So the kids starts playing that He says now with this other hand I want you to talk to that bass drum so it's gonna go He's in our own one beat both of your hands are gonna say the same thing at the same time they're gonna agree He says you have a conversation and then you reach the point where you understand what both of y'all are saying He said go So the kids start playing you know It wasn't quite what the man saying But when he started to play at the old man looked at him and said oh, that's beautiful Now we all knew that it was sad But it made us feel like it was beautiful See turned to the tuba place had not sung you you you wait 200 pounds you played a tuba See now what I want you to do on the tuba is boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom we're gonna call you tuba And since you fat we're gonna call you tuba fat So we call them tuba fat and he start playing boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom but it didn't sound like that really I'm like a kid playing When the kid finished playing he said well, that's I Know you were tuba player you're natural He turns to the trombone player and he says You play with the tuba but stay out of his way So the trombone player Sounded terrible, but he missed it. He said man. That's beautiful Turned to the kid with glasses on it say you have glasses on you're clarinet player Now what you do is you play high and you play a lot of figurations like do the little bupa do bupa do bupa do But he started singing stuff so the kids stop man. Bup bup bupa squeaking it was terrible He said he said Man, how did you get a tone like that? That's a beautiful tone Now of course the kid knew that it was a terrible tone But he said I do get a nice tone out of this if the old man is saying it's a good tone. It must be good He said not a one thing that you have to do is stay up high And whenever you can play a little trail or something that looks cute That sounds like it's gonna be cute play that So he turned to me he said well You look like a trumpet player because you have a big head And big ears He said now you want to play the melody I said what is the melody say I'm gonna sing this tune to you So he started singing the song he said So I'll listen to it I said okay I hear that He said man you really can't play He said I want all of y'all to play together And we all started playing together and it was the worst thing you ever heard in your entire life Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom we just played for like some of my time in a while while we were playing he was standing up one And And when we finished playing he said y'all sound great You all sound great All of those musicians that played in that band were 8 and 9 They all still played New Orleans jazz today And a lot of them are the best musicians you ever heard in your life And that old man could hear that then And none of us could hear it And he's the one that made us understand what the music was about And he taught us what it meant to hear and to listen