Harry 'Sweets' Edison discusses his love of music.

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Harry 'Sweets' Edison discusses the influence of the church on his development.

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Harry 'Sweets' Edison discusses his early days as a musician.

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Q: “You’re probably most famous of course for your work with the Basie band, that was kind of the big unveiling, but you obviously had wide experience before that. Did you start playing around Columbus with bands?”

A: “Oh yes, yes. I’ll never forget there is a ... I lived next door to a saxophone player. His name was Paul Tyler and I used to practice every day coming from school and the band around Columbus was named Earl Hood. He worked weekends, you know, and he said, “Why don’t you come to try out for the band?" And I was so excited, you know. So I did. And I was so enthused, and at that time, there was a band being formed around Columbus with Joe Thomas, who was with Jimmy Langsford [ph]. Let’s see, who else was around there that joined that band, Cy Oliver and, oh, they were my idols because they were much older than me. You know, they had all the girls because they had all the … they had wardrobe, that’s all. They were the stalwarts of the jazz world of Columbus, Ohio, which was a very sad jazz town. But it was a good dance town because everyone in that town loved to go to dances at the time. And the big bands that come through there, they had nothing but crowds of people. But as I said I finally got a job with Earl Hood's band and my grades began to get so bad until my mother made me quit, you know. She said, "You've got to go to school there. You know, you have no choice. You'll just have to quit playing.” Because they would go places like Dayton, Ohio on a Saturday night, and my mother wanted me to go to church. I was missing out on that, you know. And I had to quit the band for a while, and I wasn’t making any money anyway every time he would pay the band, all of which would be about fifty cents. It was no more than a dollar was a good night. He would give everybody else that nights’ money but me. He would tell me, “You’re playing for experience, you know.” So my mother said, “To hell with experience, you've got to make some money, you know, because I’m trying to pay for this horn I bought you.” And she was really struggling. She paid a dollar down on it and I think it was something like fifty-cents a week she would pay on this horn, and she says, you know, "If that’s all you're going to do is play for experience, you just have to experience what you’re going to experience at home, you know."