His father was an itinerant Methodist minister with his own daily radio program, Christian Voices, which could be heard on WFIL, WIP and WCAM.

I finally got angry enough to throw it down on my mattress hard enough that I slightly bent it, so we had a repair bill to start out with.

"[2] The clarinet would be repaired at the local music shop and Bill's band teacher suggested that he might try a different instrument, the trombone.

[2] Bill's introduction to jazz came by way of a "very unusual recording" he heard one day: "On one side of the disc was a recording of Knute Rockne, the famous football coach of Notre Dame, speaking – no, rather, yelling – at his team during halftime and they were losing, so you can imagine the energy there.

"[2] Bill would continue playing and at 11 years old would begin studying with Donald Rheinhardt, famous for his "Pivot" system of mouthpiece placement.

[3] "He was a clinician, a visionary, a pioneer, a trail blazer," recalls Pearce, "and all of the great musicians, both symphonic and jazz, as they came through Philadelphia, would come and spend a couple of hours with Don Rheinhardt.

"To tell you the truth I did not make out too well as a student of Don Rheinhardt," he says, "because I just felt that he was intimidating – my being so young and all – so I thought it was time to move on.

Bill, along with Percy's wife, Ruth, as an accompanist, played the song "He Lives" – "Two verses and an extra refrain in B flat – no variations", he recalls.

"When he would call me in for a lesson I would know that was pending so I would get about 5 minutes of cramming in to see what I could do with lip trills and making decent sounds and scales and things like that.

It was completely dark in the theater and you heard those drums begin – it was Krupa doing a tom-tom solo, and before you knew it they were into 'Song of India.'

"As we were better known and got more invitations," he recalls, "we spread out from the Philadelphia area to New York, New England down to Baltimore and Washington DC and so on.

'"[2] About this time, World War II broke out, and many high school teenagers were being drafted and joining the army.

"My father, having been in the service in World War I, knew some of the military people who had become generals later and one of his speaking engagements in Washington, DC found him over the Pentagon to look up some of his old buddies.

Meanwhile, Bill was getting ready to board a train to take him to the west coast, and then, to the Pacific, when he heard a sergeant call his name, "'I don't know who in "H" you know [...] but you've been transferred out of this unit.

He was, as Pearce recalled, "a tough number and decided that no Marine should go through his tour of duty without going overseas or seeing action or something like that.

"[2] In Hawaii, ready to ship out for combat duty, Pearce once again found himself wielding a trombone rather than a gun.

Well, the next day, I got my Don Reinhardt Mouthpiece out of my sea bag and grabbed a trombone from somewhere and they brought over a pianist and a fair to middling drummer and a bass player and said, 'Well, what do you want to kick off?'

He told me to go down to the quartermaster, and turn in my rifle and grab a trombone from the warehouse of musical instruments.

I picked out a beautiful French Selmer trombone with a white case and a purple plush lining inside and engraving all the way up the bell and a big "USMC" down the front and man, this was a class item!

So, that's what I did during – playing my way, entertaining Navy and Marine Corps troops in the Pacific theatre and mainland China until discharge.

"[2] He continued to work as a truck driver, played a few dance jobs, he even joined the American Legion drum and bugle corps.

He talked to the program director even though I didn't have the greatest record at the school, so they put me on six months' probation.

So I got with that tape recorder and I practiced vocabulary through the Reader's Digest 'Word Power' section, learned a new word every couple of days and used it.

I worked on the vowel sounds and listened to the great voices at NBC and CBS like Dave Garroway and Paul Harvey.

I was a newsman and announcer and I worked on my stuttering and my air-headedness and fortunately found an older man at the radio station who took an interest in helping me and got me into the Word of God.

"[2] Bill would move up to become "Special Events Director" for WMBI, he would also branch out and start doing interviews.

I was working hard and new young arrangers came through with good ideas and we were doing albums with top musicians.

[2] Bill Pearce, died February 23, 2010, in Xenia, Ohio, from complications of Parkinson's disease.