Ray Drummond discusses his decision to become a musician

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Ray Drummond discusses the tuba

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Ray Drummond discusses his musical influences

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Q: “About the influences as a bass player – you mention [Charles] Mingus, so obviously way back when you were still in high school you were catching on to him but there were some pretty good bass players around that must have pointed your way [such as] Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown…”

A: “Actually, Ray Brown and Paul Chambers and O.P. are really the three guys that really kind of lit my fire and that's, of course, when you take those guys all in consideration plus Mingus, they were probably the most of the guys who were doing a lot of records. Besides Milt Hinton and George Devivier. Now, you get those six guys in a room, then I guess if you wipe the room out, you would have wiped out New York City's bass-playing population, you know, for all the records that were being made in the 50s. So I would have to say that those six people definitely I was exposed to coming up as a young person, pre-teen, teenager.”