After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when 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."