his favorite thing was to go by where they first started broadcasting the “Today” show, when Dave Garroway was the host. It was in a studio on the street level, so people could watch the show from the sidewalk, looking through this big plate glass window. Dizzy would go up to the window while the show was on the air—they shot it live, you know—and stick out his tongue and make faces at the chimpanzee on the show. Man, he would fuck with that chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs, so much, he would drive him crazy. The chimpanzee would be screaming, jumping up and down and showing his teeth, and everybody on the show would be wondering what the fuck got into him. Every time that chimpanzee laid eyes on Dizzy, he’d go crazy. But dizzy was also very, very beautiful and I loved him and still do today.

Never did learn to eat that chicken slowly.

I go into into Daut’s Drugstore and tell Mr. Dominic, the owner, to give me twenty-five cents’ worth of them juicy chocolate soldiers—my favorite candy at that time. You could get three chocolate candy soldiers for a penny, so he sells me seventy-five of them. Now I got my big bag of candy, and I’m standing out in front of my father’s office, sharp as a tack, and I’m eating the candy soldiers faster than nobody’s business.

When I found him, though, I would ask him to put the trumpet to his mouth just because I loved the way he held it. And he would, with a big smile on his face.

I nodded that I understood. But, man, that shit shocked me, disturbed the fuck out of me. Then, I found out later that this doctor had this real big house, that he was rich and had his own airplane. He had all this shit that he made off people—poor black people that he didn’t give a fuck about. That shit made me sick. So I thought about William’s death and what my father told me about how some doctors were. I just couldn’t understand how someone could look at somebody whose heart is still beating and just say that the person’s going to die tomorrow morning and not try to do something about it—at least try to ease the pain. It just seemed to me, at that time, that if someone’s heart is still beating then that person’s still got a chance to live. I decided that I wanted to be a doctor so I could try and save the lives of people like William.

But you know how it is. You say you want to be this, you want to be that. And then, finally, something else just comes along and moves it out of your head, especially when you’re young. Music just moved medicine out of my head. that is, if it ever really was there in the first place. I had in my head that if I didn’t make it as a musician by the time I was twenty-four, I was going to do something else. That something else, in my mind, was medicine.

many have argued that the detective story developed slowly and incompletely because the design of the Japanese house was not “suitable to frankly secret crimes,”

The greatest feeling I ever had in my life—with clothes on—was when I first heard Diz and Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944. I was eighteen years old and had just graduated from Lincoln High School. his favorite thing was to go by where they first started broadcasting the “Today” show, when Dave Garroway was the host. It was in a studio on the street level, so people could watch the show from the sidewalk, looking through this big plate glass window. Dizzy would go up to the window while the show was on the air—they shot it live, you know—and stick out his tongue and make faces at the chimpanzee on the show. Man, he would fuck with that chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs, so much, he would drive him crazy. The chimpanzee would be screaming, jumping up and down and showing his teeth, and everybody on the show would be wondering what the fuck got into him. Every time that chimpanzee laid eyes on Dizzy, he’d go crazy. But dizzy was also very, very beautiful and I loved him and still do today. Never did learn to eat that chicken slowly. I go into into Daut’s Drugstore and tell Mr. Dominic, the owner, to give me twenty-five cents’ worth of them juicy chocolate soldiers—my favorite candy at that time. You could get three chocolate candy soldiers for a penny, so he sells me seventy-five of them. Now I got my big bag of candy, and I’m standing out in front of my father’s office, sharp as a tack, and I’m eating the candy soldiers faster than nobody’s business. When I found him, though, I would ask him to put the trumpet to his mouth just because I loved the way he held it. And he would, with a big smile on his face. I nodded that I understood. But, man, that shit shocked me, disturbed the fuck out of me. Then, I found out later that this doctor had this real big house, that he was rich and had his own airplane. He had all this shit that he made off people—poor black people that he didn’t give a fuck about. That shit made me sick. So I thought about William’s death and what my father told me about how some doctors were. I just couldn’t understand how someone could look at somebody whose heart is still beating and just say that the person’s going to die tomorrow morning and not try to do something about it—at least try to ease the pain. It just seemed to me, at that time, that if someone’s heart is still beating then that person’s still got a chance to live. I decided that I wanted to be a doctor so I could try and save the lives of people like William. But you know how it is. You say you want to be this, you want to be that. And then, finally, something else just comes along and moves it out of your head, especially when you’re young. Music just moved medicine out of my head. that is, if it ever really was there in the first place. I had in my head that if I didn’t make it as a musician by the time I was twenty-four, I was going to do something else. That something else, in my mind, was medicine. many have argued that the detective story developed slowly and incompletely because the design of the Japanese house was not “suitable to frankly secret crimes,”