Although there was nothing really down-home about the music I learned at [the Blind] school, all music fascinated me. I was happy to play melodies I hadn't heard before. We learned silly tunes like "Won't You Come Out and Play with Me?" and when I was eleven or twelve, I joined the choir where I was the youngest kid in the group. Every chance I had, I imitated the hits of the day. We had one radio at school,and naturally it was controlled by the big boys... They decided what everyone else listened to... I was hearing what everyone else in America was listening to--the big bands. I learned the Glenn Miller numbers and all the big tunes by Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gray, and Benny Goodman. I liked them fine, and I was interested in studying the arrangements and hearing how the different sections--the horns, the reeds, the rhythm--were doing different things. Now you didn't find no muddy Mississippi blues on the radio. That music was available only on what we called race records. But those low-down sounds were things I already knew. They were as much a part of me as my nose, my teeth, or the hair on my head. << less