-a beneficial. Each step I produced, I needed to really make the next you to definitely together with second that, so by the point which i graduated, in 1943, I had scholarships.

I found myself performing very well, you know. I was an enthusiastic honor scholar. I became the third large throughout the classification. My girlfriend Frances Coleman is the fresh salutatorian of your senior group. She was just some point prior to myself. And therefore pal away from mine that i told you was my basic boyfriend, Claude Body organ, Jr., try the latest valedictorian. He was an effective smartie. They are the big physician today training during the You.C. [University out of California] Davis. [laughter] But he was a prankster in school, too. By the point which i graduated, I experienced grants to help you Oberlin [Conservatory] and also to Bennett University. However, my professor had a page off Prairie Look at [Agricultural and you may Mechanized School], that is down near Houston. The fresh band manager there, Will Henry Bennett, understood our very own teacher-our band teacher, Conrad Johnson-and you can he would heard about me personally. My personal teacher ended up being bragging to help you him on me. They wanted us to come to Prairie Look at, although they didn’t offer a grant. But once I found out that they had an almost all-girl band around [the newest Prairie Examine Coeds], and here I happened to be heading. The newest scholarships become damned! We was not heading everywhere but around. And exactly how that we got as a result of college was, my buddy Fred is actually

throughout the provider, and then he produced aside their allocation consider in my experience to pay my personal university fees. That’s the ways I experienced because of college when it comes to those 24 months down in the Prairie See, owing to my a few brothers.

[My buddy Mel together with generated away their check if you ask me for the 1944. Mel was at the marines.] I was pleased which they achieved straight back, you know, to aid its sister get a degree. Incase I eventually got to Prairie View, it had been- I played certain basic trumpet and i played the brand new solos.

So i went to Prairie Have a look at

[Helen is very good. She will be able to nonetheless enjoy damn an excellent keyboards.] They’d never read a woman to try out this new trumpet particularly We is actually to try out. You understand, this new Sweethearts out of Beat got aside, but the majority of these was to tackle solos that men wrote note having note, but girls particularly Vi Buoneidy otherwise Jean Starr and you may Little Davis.

I found myself a songs significant in the Prairie Evaluate School

Yeah, however, I happened to be carrying out my very own solos at that time, once i have got to Prairie Evaluate, but into the specific songs they expected to tune in to a similar solamente which had been towards the number, new solo into the Erskine Hawkins’s “Tuxedo Junction.” So they really was indeed

quite shocked by the entire thing, which, in my experience, try absolutely nothing. I became merely starting everything i liked accomplish. And i is actually glad that i were able to see a place in which I can continue. We stayed indeed there up to January 1945. These people were toward session program-I remaining here if semester ended. The original part of elizabeth house to own Christmas time. I had to go back the first part of January and you can rating my transcript, given that I transported away right here so you can UCLA within the 1945. My father try coming-out to Los angeles to focus when you look at the the brand new shipyards inside the Enough time Beach. But as i was here, in the university year, to the weekends we’d gamble Houston, Dallas, Fort Worthy of, San Antonio han har et godt punkt, Austin, Waco, Vent Arthur, Corpus Christi. We had play most of the highest urban centers into the Texas.

Sure. This new band, this new Prairie See Coeds. The fresh the-girl band. We starred Houston. Just about every week-end we would get in Houston. Nevertheless the weekends i weren’t indeed there, we’d enter this type of almost every other places.