Jazz was going through some changes about now [1950’s]. I heard what West Coast cats like Gerry Mulligan or Brubeck or Kenton were doing, and it was good music. But my heart was really with the East Coast dudes. They were harder cats and had a grittier sound. I'm talkin' 'bout Art Blakey's band or Horace Silver's or the Max Roach/ Clifford Brown outfit. There was more blues in their playing, the approach was tougher, and my own band, when we did jazz, played more in that mold. Even today, some twenty years later, I still hear something different about the way the cats play back East. They're pushier, more aggressive. They got a certain stink that the guys in L.A. lack. California musicians are pure and clean. They play correctly--almost virginlike. But I miss the filth--the East Coast filth--that you hear on the streets and in the recording studios of New York City. << less