In the summer of 1988, I was playing at 'Logan's Inn' in New Hope Pennsilvania, when a tall well dressed guy came up to the piano while I was playing 'It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing'. At the end he said 'I like the way you play that tune (toon)'. We talked and had a few drinks together and became good friends. The following night he came again and listened to my playing.
Later in the following Spring we met up again at a gig in Darlington. He took Brenda and me out to dinner after the rehearsal.
Before he left to continue a European tour, he gave me something which has become one of my most treasured possessions; an arrangement of 'Loverman', which he had written many years before for Billy Holliday. The manuscript had a beer stain on it as it had been written in a bar in New York.
'Sweets' at the Arts Centre, Darlington 1989.