11. Dizzy GillespieManteca
I think Dizzy Gillespie is fantastic – I still play some of his songs. I had a band called Nik Turner’s Fantastic All Stars, and there was a trumpet player in the band called Ricky Welsh, who was really brilliant, unfortunately he’s passed on as well, rest in peace Ricky, and he had trained on the cruise ships and was really into Dizzy Gillespie. We were playing some of the songs, but much faster than Dizzy Gillespie was playing them, which is quite a feat really! Music like this motivates me and I think I can learn from it, that’s really the common thread running through my selections. I don’t try to imitate them, I just take the tunes and play them my way.
