Everybody was experimenting around 1942, but nobody had set a style yet. Bird [Charlie Parker] provided the push. An odd thing about Bird's influence on The Street [52nd St., New York] is that the style he was so influential in developing was played on all instruments but his own horn-- the alto. The reason was that Bird was so supreme on alto. I think I was one of the first to play alto like Bird, but I gave up because he was so superior. So I continued to get influenced from listening to him in clubs, and I used that influence for the clarinet. Where else could a clarinet player go after Benny Goodman? That was why Bird was such a godsend to me, especially because I'd already been fooling around with altered chords from the time I was at Juilliard. And I liked what Bird did with his lines, and I liked the way he formed a chorus. << less