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.

I always admired trumpet players like Harry James. I always loved that melodic sound, a fat sound.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

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.

Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.