Toots Thielemans I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language." In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to
Ahmadiyya in the United States Clouds." Although Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane did not become Ahmadi Muslims, they were influenced by the spirit of Islam bought by the Ahmadis. "A Love Supreme", one of Coltrane's greatest pieces of work, considered by some as the greatest Jazz album of all time, was deeply influenced by the work of the Ahmadiyya movement. In the liner notes of the album, Coltrane repeatedly echoes "Basmala", the opening verse of almost every chapter of the Quran: "Now and again through the unerring hand of God, I do perceive his ... Omnipotence ... He is Gracious and Merciful." Between