Yes, when I left the Army I was working with Horace Silver, like for a couple of weeks. We were working at this one place in New York and this lady came up to me and said, 'My name is Anita. My husband wants to meet you.' I was back in the kitchen working on my horn and she went back and got her husband, who was John Coltrane. She said, 'He likes what you're doing.' He said to me, 'You're playing that funny stuff, all over the horn.'
He invited me to his house, so I went. It was very nice to meet him because I knew he was the only one that was on to something musically that was moving. When I was in the Army we used to go to DC and see Miles with 'Trane and Cannonball. So I went to his house, and they wouldn't let me leave! They were cooking and we'd sit and talk about life, and he'd play the piano, and then stop, and then we'd compare horns. He'd say, 'That's a nice horn, but if you can get one of those old mouthpieces ... I think you have to shake that horn up, separate the molecules.'
I later looked around horn shops for the kind of old Link mouthpiece he recommended. Anyway, after that, John called me, Freddie Hubbard, and some other people to work with him at Birdland on a Monday night. The group opposite them was Cannonball's group. They were both still with Miles, but that was their off night. People twenty-five years after that said, 'That was a hell of a night!'
( Man I was born in the wrong decade! - Ed)
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