Although I'm originally from NY, my parents moved to Seattle in 1949, when I was six. I took piano and violin lessons from a local teacher at age eight. I was growing up in that unfortunate era in pop music in the early 1950s where swing had died and rock'n'roll hadn't taken hold yet. It was totally bland city...all Doris Day, Mitch Miller and Frankie Lane. Then I heard Chuck Miller play Boogie Woogie on his recording of The House of Blue Lights. I was thirteen and immediately quit piano lessons and pursued jazz. That record became a number one hit and soon after, there was Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard in pop music and, around the same time in jazz, there was early Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball and Bill Evans, and five years later, Herbie, Tony, Wayne and Chick Corea too. An astounding musical era in which to be a teenager!