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
Australian jazz that lasted from the early 1920s to the 1970s. He was chosen to lead the famous jazz orchestra that was put together for the opening in 1936 of the Sydney Trocadero, which became the city's leading dance venue for the next 35 years, and Coughlan led the orchestra at "The Troc" until its closure in 1971. After the end of World War II Australian jazz began to diverge into two major strands: dixieland or 'traditional jazz' (early jazz) and modern styles like progressive swing, boogie-woogie and bop as exemplified by the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie Graeme Bell