They basically said that if I didn`t show up for school they`d mark me present, they wouldn`t send the truant officer after me. At 16 I enrolled in something called continuing education. Once a month I`d go out to Jamaica, but I didn`t take it seriously.
There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren`t personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.
One of my earliest memories... I knew three full verses of the Star Spangled Banner when I was seven or eight years old. And one of the nuns discovered this phenomenon and I was actually sent around from classroom to classroom to do the whole thing.