“Roger (Kellaway) amazed us all. Blessed with great technique, he could play any style, from ragtime to space music.”

He had a beautiful touch, knew all the best ways around the chord changes, and swung mightily. And he brought an air of cheerful competence to every date, making us all feel that it would be possible to make some very good music that day.

We sailed to Italy on the Andrea Doria, a year before it sank, and Zoot (Sims) and I played a lot of ping-pong on deck during that trip.

My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records.

My reading was good enough to play big-band charts, but I ran into trouble with Claude (Thornhill)’s theme song “Snowfall,” which had a repeating bass line in D-flat that was very difficult for me to finger using my self-taught technique.

Whatever style he chose to play at the moment would be filled with wonderful surprises that kept the rest of us continually delighted.