IB SKOVGAARD/JP JAZZ ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
I had been living in New York since 1958 when I moved to go to school at Juilliard. Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers were working at my dad’s club in Baltimore, and he got wind that John Gilmore was going to leave the band and go back to Sun Ra. So he called me and said, “Why don’t you come down to Baltimore and sit in with the band? I think Art might be looking for a saxophone player.” And so I did that, and Art liked what he heard and hired me. And Lee [Morgan] liked me too, because Lee was the straw boss – he had the final say too. I joined the band right from Baltimore, we went to Boston and then we had a tour of the West Coast. When we got back to New York, Lee Morgan jumped out of the car, ran right through the tunnel and disappeared. They kept calling, leaving messages, but they couldn’t find him, so Art called Freddie Hubbard to do the record date. But Lee Morgan finally showed up too, so that’s how I ended up on my first record with Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.