It allowed me to develop because I had a forum for my ideas, top-quality people carry them out, and time, because we were often snowed in."While in the air force he studied the piano On his release in 1959 he joined Lionel Hampton's band. "I was dissatisfied with the experience because it was a sort of machine-like existence. The two best books on the subject, with 650 pages between them, concentrate on the lionised Gerry Mulligan and Shorty Rogers, both of whom, like many of their West Coast colleagues, were born in the East. Neither book mentions Tapscott.Tapscott took up the trombone and when he was called up in 1952 joined the Air Force Band, where he found several colleagues of future note like Houston Person and Billy James "All I had to do was write and perform with the orchestra. "Gerald Wilson and Melba Liston" (internationally famous jazz players and composers) "acquainted me with the fact that I had to study to be something other than a kid wandering the streets with my horn."The music being played in the clubs on the city's Central Avenue at that time was to become the stuff of legend, although the history of West Coast jazz pays scant regard to the music of the black musicians.

The family lived near to the local black musicians' union building (Los Angeles musicians' unions were segregated until 1953), and as a teenager Tapscott met some of the most distinguished instrumentalists of the area. When things calmed down Tapscott was given some state and federal funding, and the Arkestra began to play weekly, mainly in churches and universities.Tapscott was born in Houston and taken by his mother, Mary Lou Malone, to Los Angeles in 1945 when he was nine Malone was a stride pianist and tuba player. "Kids were dancing in the streets while the Arkestra played inside," he said. "That is until the police found it necessary to pour in through the doors and at gunpoint order 30 dancers and musicians to stop playing." Tapscott took the Arkestra out into the riots, playing on the backs of lorries. The Ugmaa was also used as a second name for the Underground Musicians' Union, a secondary creation of Tapscott's.The race riots in Watts of 1965 were a seminal part of the history of the civil rights movement Watts is a mainly black suburb of Los Angeles Tapscott took the Arkestra to play during the disturbances. He was a significant figure within the black community of Los Angeles, and the various orchestras he led became rallying points for the city's young musicians.

The two best known of his groups were the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension Foundation (Ugmaa). These were not names that would fit easily on a record label, and that is perhaps a reason why his groups made so few recordings. He was not so much a musical anarchist as one who simply chose to use his own system. NEW YORK jazz musicians will often cite the balmy climate of California as a reason for not living there, regarding it as destructive of any creative musical urge. The musical rebels are most usually found in the poorer parts of New York or Chicago.