[In 1950's Los Angeles]. Lowell [Fulson] had a little blues band. I remember Earl Brown, his alto player, and I remember Eddie Piper, his drummer. At different times there were different horn players--Stanley Turrentine played tenor, Billy Brooks and Fleming Askew played trumpet-- and the group was more or less modeled after the T-Bone Walker sound. Lowell was a cat--like Pee Wee Crayton--very much in the T-Bone groove. He played the electric guitar and he sung the blues. And that was it. He had a good, down-home sound, and in the early fifties that style was very hot, specially round California. I was put on the bill by Jack [Lauderdale, a record producer] and an agent, Ben Waller… I was a guest artist, and my "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" was being played around the country in many black communities. I was just a little jiveass celebrity. But Lowell's "Every Day I Have the Blues" was a smash hit: back then it was the biggest thing going. He also had a hot tune called "Blue Shadows."… I tried to add a little variety to the music… I wrote a few other things, especially once we picked up our horn players… To me the big thrill was just hearing the horns playing back something I had written… The reward was in the music, in the sounds I created, in the pleasure it brought to me, to Lowell, to the other cats in the band, and to the people who paid to hear us. << less