Born Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. December 29,1942.
My parents had various of recordings from Hank Williams to Gene Autry to Broadway musicals like The Dessert Song, Porgy and Bess, Showboat, etc.
At age 5, my parents asked me if I would like to take guitar lessons which I promptly said yes to. At my first lesson I was escorted to a room which had about 30 young people all attempting to play the Hawaiian guitar.
After one year I had had enough. Later in my early teens I had a strong desire to play music and considered the guitar again but this time the Spanish Guitar.
But when I heard the sound of one of my friend's saxophone that he had just gotten, I knew that was what I wanted to play. For $3.00 a week one could rent a saxophone and get a half hour lesson and I quickly took advantage of this opportunity.
In 1959 I went away to a boarding school but without a saxophone. But I did have Benny Goodman's recording of Sing, Sing, Sing, and at the end of the school year I returned home and took up the tenor saxophone again and after a year was playing in a local dance band. I remember the uneasy feeling I had when the group I played with replaced a group of older musicians who I thought played so much better than us and played better material. (We were only beginners). Within the next year I had decided that I wanted to be a full time musician and somehow found my way to Paul Brodie in Toronto who was a student of Marcel Mule considered the world's greatest classical saxophonist as well as being the Professor of Saxophone at the Paris Conservatory.
After 2 years of intense study with Mr. Brodie, I went to the Berklee School of Music in Boston from 1964 to '69. From 1970 to '74 lived in Toronto and in 1974 made a move to New York City which has been my home ever since.
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