Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.

My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.

We don't need sugar, flour or rice or anything else. We just want to see our dear ones,

We used to play the Savoy Ballroom, and we always had a boogie tune in the set. Bands like Tommy Dorsey used to do a little boogie woogie. The big bands.

My Dad is my hero.

The new store really caught on. During the 20s, they tell about hauling (train) carloads of flour, sugar and coal to the store, ... They'd bring 55-gallon barrels of kerosene from the railroad at Elmer. Sometimes, they'd sell a carload of flour a week. A lot of cowboys worked for the Waggoner Ranch just across the river.