Oh, the jazz "purists" of one persuasion or another are still alive and kicking, are they? Our band never paid any attention to all that purist crap - we just played what we liked. We'd follow a nice, old-fashioned version of "Beale Street", say, with Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-ooh" and then perhaps a really heavy, guitar-riff based version of Mongo Santamaria's "Watermelon Man" - and then "Shake Your Money Maker" with me blasting away on blues harp with a brass line behind me!

Unlike many of the band of the period, we had a 4-piece front line - trombone, alto sax, trumpet and tenor/baritone - so we could vary the sound considerably.

Good days.