My mother had eight brothers and sisters, and my aunt Evelyn was the middle sister. She was the first one to go to college and she decided to study opera, which was fairly unusual. We didn’t even know what the word meant. I was about three when she met a bass player named Nevin Wilson, who was playing with Ahmad Jamal. Nevin was the first real musician in my life. They got married and moved to Rockford, Illinois, and over the years I would sometimes go to stay with them. So I was exposed to some of the music that they were doing. I wanted to play bass because my uncle played bass. But when I got up on a chair to play it, it hurt my fingers. I asked him why I was having all these problems, and he told me I was going to have to wait to grow up to play bass. I said, “I guess I won’t play the bass if I have to wait to grow up to do it.”
I didn’t have any intentions at that point in terms of becoming a musician. I just knew I liked music a lot and I wanted to play it. I kept noodling at the keyboard, learning things by ear.
No comments:
Post a Comment