I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. And the family left there when I was six and my sister was 3. And I was pretending it music. even then I don't remember very much around the age of six except that we were torn away from the grandparents and and family and stuff and we had to move out to California because my father had a lung condition that was very close to tuberculosis and in Los Angeles in those days. It was dry weather. And so they sent him out there went out there. I remember always been a scavenger to I've went by this trash can there was his book of music book and I took it out and I found a pencil and I pretended I was writing music in it. My mother was giving my my sister piano lessons with a neighbor child. The teacher would come over. And one day she came over to the neighbors. Mrs. Clark's after the lesson and discovered. I was playing the lesson so she found a few more pennies scraped up a few more pennies so that I could take lessons and then it was another piano teacher. He was later. We were waiting for her to come over with another neighbor's child. I was taking piano lessons. And so Jamie and I were trying to see who could sing higher, you know, and or how high we could go and I suppose as a teacher was walking from the bus up to the how she heard all this screaming and carrying on and she tested both of us out and on the spot. She became a voice teachers. He started giving me voice lessons. And then she gave me a voice lessons for free then we were I wasn't taking lessons with her anymore and my mother found some pennies for me take voice lessons. I just want to go out get out of my head. Everyday, I don't wanna get up get out of my bed. Every night I want to play out. Every day I wanna do but tonight I just want to stay here and be with you. And be with you I'm wasting my God brings a new the days. I hated the guitar at one point. I was growing up at the end of the big band era and that the show will change every week and my father would take us to the black theater and we'd hear Duke Ellington and wheat here Jimmy Langsford be here the big bands in the singers. And another thing that was a part of his life. That was absolute necessity was listening to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night Saturday. Saturday's were spring cleaning in our household. And so we have to just do everything, you know, including washing those dumb little knickknacks and soap and water and drying them right? I promised I'd never have knickknacks. Well, I don't have those dickbags, but you can't live a life without mixing knickknacks. It seems and Saturday afternoons where I was in the cleaning of the house. I was it was all right to stop and sit in front of the radio and listen to the Metropolitan Opera and then when I was finished, I'd finished my work. Well, I was I was one of those snob teenagers where if it wasn't classical it wasn't. As a matter of fact, I decided it because of the way I was if I ever had children, I freeze them at 13 or 12 if they were precocious and then I thought about at 21 and throw him out because you don't know I was terrible. I don't really know how my parents put up with me. Well at the age of 19 I was in production of Finian's Rainbow in Los Angeles. There were two opera companies one in San Francisco and Los Angeles and then we traded places. Was the first time I was away from home by myself and went up to San Francisco to do the show and a woman. I had gone to Junior High School with was married and living up there. They found me Joe and Paul Mapes Joanne and it was through hanging out with him. That I heard in this romantic Garrett apartment with the ceilings all slanted and terrible wine for a few hours people sat around seeing these things. They called folk songs and it hit me in the right spot and it's amazing when you start getting interested in something how you start meeting guides or people who were interested in the same thing. So when I got back to Los Angeles I was talking about this folk music in the guitar and whatever and an acquaintance had a guitar was going to learn but then had children didn't have the time to and she gave me her guitar and taught me a few chords and I started struggling and it's amazing. freedom Before I'd be slave leave. I've been in my grave. Go home tomorrow. and before No more. No more before I'd be sleeping in my grave. Andy Freedom over me before I could be sleeping in my grave to my Lord and be free. I'm going to let Lance I'm gonna do that if that land away. There's an old me in letter. There's no need don't in that land where. The land I'm gonna do that land where I'm but I'm on my way and I won't turn back. I'm on my way. Turn back. I'm on my way to go and meet my brother. Oh you come with me. I'm only letting me go on my own all I asked the captain no hold you. Let me go I gotta go in. I'm on my way on my way. I'm on my way. I'm on my way. One of the things I wanted to do was about the perception that a lot of people have that. Different groups of people only like certain styles of music for instance men don't like soft love songs or blacks don't like Bluegrass or all those stereotypes in In Living with people and being around musicians. What kind of things have you discovered about people in their musical tastes at one point somebody somewhere decided that people could only listen to one. That's like saying you can only love one person in your life. Right? I think that the industry the music industry has an awful lot to do with deciding what people will listen to Having nothing to do with with surveys or just putting things on and seeing what happens right that there is I think that there is a purposeful separation because if they have two markets and they can bill get more know I think that people are much more able to accept many different kinds and on my my father was a black man. He's listening to the Grand Ole Opry years ago for heaven sakes and so it's it's It's propaganda and I resent it and I resent many of the many of the black stations that well, I guess the thing that's going on now is Disco and I get the feeling that there's somebody hammering on the top of my head after a while. I find no imagination. I found I find repetitive kind of thing and I understand that when teaching children repetition is very good, but we're adults now. And even with children you wouldn't do that the thing that they do with these disco records. I mean for five minutes is all going to be going good. It's hateful for as far as I'm concerned it is it is hateful it's degenerating. It's it's depleting and somebody now, they're not awful lot of people out there who were trying to get recorded and trying to get their stuff out. But after all it really is the people who are in the recording industry and those who program radio stations that decide what is going to be played and their many people who have recorded and there's gorgeous stuff. They're not played. So it's the area of different parts of the industry controlling and don't you believe that someone can I mean that's like if you love apple pie having apple pie for breakfast lunch and dinner all the time. Oh, please. I was in classical music then I stumbled into folk music. Very shy very backward kid started getting into folk music then I started via being into folk music start learning about a history of this country and the people in it that I didn't learn in the history books generally speaking in the school. Your Heroes are the ones who have caused the most death and maiming to the most people and that's not my flow. Right? So I started I was singing when I first started with sheer unadulterated hate and venom through learning about the peoples in this world is in this country, especially the blacks. I cut my hair washed it and left it what is called an afro now used to be called and Odetta. So the music kicked my hair and straight into my spine and as music the music is for me the the indication of the strength especially of my forebears. I did. He had a long chain of. He had a chain. He had a chain. 18 Hey. No. As far as choosing songs, they kind of choose me there a lot of songs that I would love to sing, but it doesn't work. It doesn't fit. There's songs that jump immediately into the repertoire. There are songs that have left me John Henry was the first song that left my repertoire one night. I was singing it. And it didn't feel right. It didn't sound right. It was very uncomfortable. It was a decent performance, but I remembered back to when it was a terrific performance. If the big appeal to loan the C&O Road be the death of me love. Even if you're not here. From my hip hop down to the mold dealer in God alone is do the Bold filler a hole in took it painful. They need a new camera.