"Night after night, as I wandered in and out of clubs, bars, and
juke joints with my trumpet beneath my arm and my scores tucked
beneath my shirt, a tiny glint of something new began to emerge in
my life, something I'd never had before," he wrote in his
autobiography. "I had no control over where I lived, no control
over my sick mother, no control over my hardheartÂed stepmother and
my overwrought father. I couldn't change the attic where I slept,
or stop the anguished tears of my little brother, Lloyd, who
sometimes cried himself to sleep at night; I couldn't control the
angry whites who still called me n***** when they caught me alone
on the street, or the bourgeois, high yella blacks who considered
me too poor, too dark, and too uneducated to be a part of their
lives. But nobody could tell me how many substitute chord changes I
could stick into the bridge of 'Cherokee'. Nobody could tell me
which tempo to play 'Bebop' or 'A Night In Tunisia' in."