During my day, there were two types of sounds. Least that's how we country folk viewed it. You had race records. Those were the black-bottom goodies, the low-moaning blues which you listened to if you wanted to get all the way down. Colored artists only. And I'm talkin' 'bout Big Boy Crudup, Tampa Red, Muddy Waters, Blind Boy Phillips, Washboard Sam, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the boogie-woogie piano players--Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, and Albert Ammons--who I loved with all my heart. On the other hand, there was music from the radio. Most of it was swing, black or white. Here I'm referring to Shaw, Goodman, Dorsey, Basie, and Ellington. I also understood that certain black cats--Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong--were popular among whites. But they did more to entertain me than to really influence my playing. Still, I knew that Louis was a bitch of a trumpet player and a great song stylist. And I also knew that you weren't going to back Fats into a corner; the man could play. By the time I hit the streets of Jacksonville, I'd been schooled on all these different sounds way 'fore I ever heard the word school; it was part of my natural upbringing. And at school, of course, I'd been exposed to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Sibelius, Chopin, and all the other big names. I thought that Beethoven had lots of feeling, though Bach--in spite of the fact that the cat was a genius--made me a little nervous. Once I got started playing in the big city, I could jump back and forth from different styles--doing piano boogie here or playing big-band swing there--depending upon what the boss wanted. I didn't really think about my own style yet, didn't even dawn on me that I needed one. Hell, I was so happy to be able to duplicate things I was hearing around me, I didn't see any problems. << less