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I guess these are common stories. I'm now approaching 50 (what the hell happened ??!?!?!?) and I often think of a couple of teachers who went the extra for me.

I had a ninth grade band director named Bill Broderick who was great. I first heard a Maynard record because of him and I didn't know what it was. After asking him about it, he asked me a week later if I'd like to play in 'stage band'. He ran the only ninth grade stage band in the county. He was a great band director and brilliant arranger and he would craft arrangements that were just difficult enough to really challenge us and help us to improve, yet let us sound good. We slaughtered 4 out of the 5 high school bands that we competed against that year. Bill was also the one, who a month later took me aside and suggested strongly that I get down to one of the high schools to see this band called 'Stan Kenton'. That was the first time I'd ever seen or heard anything like that live (this was the supporting tour for the '7.5 on the Richter Scale' album).

The next year, I got a new band director named John Lamb who had moved to Florida to raise his family after touring as the bass player in Duke Ellington's band and teaching (including Stanley Clark) at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. John knew I was serious about being a musician and used to give me a ride home after school (I lived 25 miles away because I handn't wanted to change schools after my father remarried) telling me stories about life as a musician....basically giving me the skinny on the street side of things: how to survive, take care of business...all that. One time after I put my horn down on a chair, John said to me "hey man, be careful of your ax...." and I didn't know what he was talking about. He was nice enough to hip me to the term 'ax' to mean one's instrument!!! Ha ha ha.....

Both of these gentlemen were great influences on me and very helpful to my pursuit of music and I use some little lesson or tidbit of info that I got from them or because of them everyday.

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