Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Video Oral History Gallery

Video Gallery Clip Transcript: Art Farmer

Donald Byrd, myself, Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, Art Taylor and Doug Watkins I guess that was an important date to me because I learned something on that date that really really gave me an identity as a player. I hadn't thought about it until then, but we came to ballad time and Donald Byrd said he was going to play 'Round About Midnight and I decided I would play When Your Lover Has Gone and I never had played that before but Walter Williams used to play it with [Lionel Aspen] and I liked the tune and I heard Dizzy play with his big band too and so I played it and I found out that I had a gift for playing the melody. You know where I could, like a lot of guys they'd play a ballad and they'd just play the melody as something just to get through so go to the solo, but I found out that I had a feel for it but I never knew it until then. So once I found out that was something that I could count on, something that I could use all the time.