For me to talk to people who are interested in music who are interested in the history of our country who are interested in Social things is very presents a very happy occasion for me. I enjoy talking about all those things because I can talk about all those things when I'm talking about jazz jazz is America's classical music. It takes all of the elements that are part of our culture and puts them into a context which says who we are and what we're about more emphatically and more eloquently than any other form of music that has been created in this country. I'm particularly proud of jazz because it was created by African-Americans when people were brought here from Africa and some of them as slaves. They were not allowed to do many of the things that were a part of their culture the cultural supports that they had in the places that they came.From Africa is a very large continent and many of the people who came here from Western Africa came from actually different countries. It's like putting a Spaniard with it a Greek with an Irishman and you know, these were people with different points of view different languages and so forth. Yeah, they were all thrown together because they were all of the same complexion and they were all put into bondage and many of them were not allowed to use the cultural supports that had been an important part of their lives in Africa at the time a couple of hundred years ago. Everything was choreographed and sort of orchestrated me there was music and and dance and all kinds of artistic expression. That was a part of daily life.I wish that could be a part of our life because it humanizes people to such an extent. When you sing. When you express yourself through the odds. Maybe you're a painter. Maybe you're a dancer. Maybe you like to speak I was saying whatever it is you do when you express yourself through one of the odds. It seems to me that you say something about yourself and to people in a way that cannot be done in any other way and I think can't be as effective in any other way. When you express yourself in other ways. I say that from personal experience because I think I'm fairly articulate. But when I play the piano something else happens and for me, it's a more graphic picture of who I am and what I'm about as I said jazz is America's classical music now when you look up the dictionary definition of classic you find that it has to do with longevity. Jazz has been around for a couple hundred years. Actually it is notEyes as was not recognized as Jazz until maybe a hundred years ago or so ago, but is actually been around much longer than that jazz has is indigenous to the culture from which it Springs and it speaks as I said earlier about who we are and what we what do we think of ourselves? The another thing that jazz does is to really sort of Define the thing that we hold very dearly in our culture which has to do with individual expression to be able to say something in your own voice to have the freedom to speak and say whatever it is what I disagree with it or not or another guy does you can say that you can do that in jazz that happens. The process of improvisation is an important part of jazz. If you get five musicians on the stage, they may be playing from the same repertoire, but they are free. There's noTo necessarily and they're free to do whatever it is. They think of in and of that moment that relates to the subject that they're presenting to you. So Jazz really speaks quite eloquently about the process of democracy. Also the idea of a classic music has to do with imitation jazz is one of the most imitated forms of Music in the 20th century. And one of the most influential it is served as a model for many other kinds of music so jazz is a very special part of what I think about how I express myself one of the things that I'm proudest of and this is really what I want to talk to you about is that over the years. I was very fortunate at the time. I was born I was born in, North Carolina.And contrary to many things you read about jazz musicians. I didn't come from a poor family. My family was not rich, but certainly not poor. My dad was a dentist. My mother was a schoolteacher the life that I lived when I was growing up was a very pleasant one. I had a ball. I mean I had two loving parents and I thought my father was the smartest guy in the world and my mother was a very special person who made sure that I did everything properly. He wasn't much of a disciplinarian, but she was and she made sure that I practice the piano when I didn't want to practice the piano and so growing up was a special thing for me the as I said, I was born in North Carolina, but I grew up in Washington DC now when I grew up in Washington DC the capital of our country is very interesting place. Why can't you see was very Prejudiced and so myMy grandfather my father's father was a Baptist Minister. He was the one of the founders of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church in Washington DC and the church. My dad was in full at a man in college and one of his letters was earned in baseball right behind. My grandfather's church was the Griffith Stadium where they Washington Senators played baseball. My dad was the conductor of his father's Choir in the church. He would conduct on Sundays when they were no baseball games and when they were baseball games, he would conduct the first part of the service and it would miraculously disappear one of his brothers and sisters would take over the Baton because he was at the ball game. And the reason I mention this is because as I said Washington was a very prejudiced town in those days, but you go to a ballgame and sit anywhere you wanted next to anyone you want eat all the food you won't do anything. It's very unsegregated in the ballpark for someBrother, you can come right down the street to the Woolworth the Five and Dime Store and you couldn't sit down and eat hotdogs it stand up do that. Washington was a very strange place, but everybody seemed to know what the rules were so it seemed to work out for a time. But the one thing about living in restricted in a restricted area, which I did was that everybody was available to me. My dad's office was at the 7th Street and T Street the corner of 7t streets. I mean and 7th and S on the corner of 7th and T Street just down middle block was the Howard Theater. Well, one of my dad's patients was the manager of the Howard Theater Howard Theater was the one theater in the black neighborhood. We all the bands came. I mean Count Basie and Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford and just great bands, so I got to go backstage andAnd said if I was quiet and didn't bother anybody and listen to all of these guys and so I was like a kid in a candy store because I had discovered Jazz at home. I had an uncle my father had four brothers and two sisters and everybody played the piano piano was a difficult instrument to get to at my house and everybody played and everybody played very well. They played Mozart and Beethoven and all the church music and all that stuff. So the piano was busy, but I had this one Uncle my Uncle Bob who sounded like this.Thank you. I call that Uncle Bob because that is the way I remember him sounding he combined many of the elements of the great Ragtime tradition and I learned much later that Ragtime had three basic pieces.It's which would perhaps best epitomize first by Scott Joplin The Next Period of perhaps by jelly roll Morton and the third period by James P Johnson Fats Waller and many others. Now those styles of jazz were sort of Incorporated in the piece. I just played because he had listened to those people like them and sort of he was self-taught so he picked up a little here and a little there and so you had a little Scott Joplin a little James P A little fat. So whatever it is that he heard liked and kind of stuck that into what he whatever he did. So all the Bob was the first person that played music it kind of caught me by the year. I didn't know what it was. I know it wasn't Mozart. I knew it wasn't Beethoven them, but I was something I like and it was the kind of music. They were playing at the Howard Theater kind of thinking I could hear on the radio in those days. So I began to search out things that sounded like that and I asked my dad. I told my dad I wanted to study piano.So he said fine. He sent me to teach you hear me doing this. Didn't sound like a kabob. So I got very bored and didn't want to do that. So I'll be going to fool around with other instruments and I played the drums and played the saxophone and played the guitar and actually went on a at the Howard Theater. I went on amateur show with another guitarist who was very good and I just kind of played I had a little tenor guitar played for notes on it wasn't 16 only four strings like a big ukulele or something and so I could play these these little cards and everything. So I comforted him. He's all over the guitar is playing all these things. So we won first prize. I was very proud I didn't do anything but I was there it's so it was nice but I realized from listening to him that I couldn't do that and I wasn't willing to spend the time practicing to learn how to do it. So I began to fool around with other instruments. And as I said, one of them was the saxophone and I had a lot of trouble with the embouchure is trying to get good sound and I was working on it and I kept noticing it this guy sitting in the band and school band with me. Days, you could borrow an instrument from school. I mean the school had instruments and even though you know the African-American schools weren't the richest schools in town, they hit instruments and so you could borrow a saxophone or trumpet and take it home and try to practice on and learn how to play it. And so I took my saxophone home and I fooled around with it and everything and it you know, it was coming along pretty well, but I'd go to rehearsal and there was this guy sitting next to me and man he could play boy. He played nice big sound and everything. And so I realized hey no sound like that. So that must not be the right one. So incidentally the guy who's sitting next to me for those of you who Jazz fans was named Frank West. He's one of the best-known saxophone players in the world these days, but then he was just a teenager. He would have big saxophone sound and much. He was a young kid, but he could really play in those days. Anyway, he convinced me that the saxophone was not my instrument. So I'm still searching for something and because I love this music and I want to participate in it and then I made an amazing Discovery in those days piano schools were a little larger than this one. They were wooden and they were you know a little longer and I found that if you sat and played something nice and pretty pretty girls came and said he'll join you. I was nice. It was nice. Yeah that got me to practicing so I thought maybe I better play the system a little better. You know, it's somebody else will come sit out, you know parties, you know, that was nice. So then I began to as I began to learn to play the repertoire because Jazz is a way of playing and it's also a large repertoire of pieces that sort of defines that way of playing and whenever I'm asked defined as always Define it that way it is a way of playing but it's the repertoire of pieces. That one studies is formidable. It's just like you study European classical music. I mean, this is music from the early periods of Ragtime music from the swing period from the Bebop period from the various periods of historical periods of jazz, you have music that sort of defines what was going on during that period so if you learn how to play Ragtime you can play something like I played a moment. If you learn how to play Swing you can play things in that style feeling on pay Bebop and that style and so on so I began to listen harder and try to learn the repertoire and I found I could learn it much quicker by ear because I'd get these records and I'd listen to them and my uncle was very helpful. He gave me a my first Fats Waller record. So I remember hearing Fats Waller do something like this. I played things which were much more difficult than that. He had one piece, which I really liked was the first time I'd ever heard and recognized a jazz walls. I mean, I had heard things kind of in 4/4 time a 2/4 time people were dancing to me, but I never heard of jazz wants to know what it was and I heard this wonderful thing that that he was playing as the first time I heard him play with a big man and it was a recording had made and I'm played this thing and played it support us beautiful symmetric. I still played sounds like this. Thank you very much. That's called Jitterbug walls and way Waller played it was very rhythmic. And he had a lot of big man backing as I said, it was really a nice Racket. And as I said my Uncle Bob gave me my first pet swallow record and from then on I was picking up all kinds of piano records. I heard Nat Cole Trio and heard a lot of other wonderful piece, you know, once you kind of opened the door you get to look at who else is doing that kind of stuff, you know, and so I was fascinating. I heard all these guys doing these wonderful things on the piano and I began to practice a little more and try to learn how to play Stride piano with the left hand and Boogie Woogie and some of the other styles of music and the great thing as I said was that everything that I was interested in was reinforced by what was going on at that particular time. As I said, I have lived through and participated in a lot of the Three of the music that I like to talk about and write about jazz is a special kind of music. It's gone through many different changes and I find when I read about some of the things that are happening what I read doesn't always coincide with what I've experienced. So I always like to talk about the music that I've experienced in the first person. So one of the things that my uncle did for me in addition to introducing me to Fats Waller was to introduce me to The Pianist who was the most influential person on my style of playing aw. Tatum are Tatum was a legendary pianist who took all of the piano styles that had preceded him and kind of put them all into just one little package and and it just came out with something that sounded so complete as piano solo that it seemed to lessen what he did whenever he played with other instruments or with base or the drums or something like that. They see you couldn't hear all the things that he was doing and that A little less is more with less in that in that context. So Art Tatum became someone who really fascinated me. He used the technique that I had formerly associated with Rachmaninoff and and lists and other classical composers that I had studied and had worked because by this time I was seriously trying to study the piano and trying to learn how to do something with these 88 keys and you know, instead of stumbling all over everything I was doing so I was trying to develop some technical facility. And so I was telling the BOK to part inventions and trying to do things that would help me play something different with either hand and so forth figuring maybe I had a strange feeling about Bach. I thought that for some strange reason they would help me play Stride piano better because those are two different things going on that I didn't help I needed to study somebody else but for that but I did get exposed to the two and three part inventions, which To be buried back in the back of my head somewhere for later use I guess and anyway the idea of taking all of the things that were coming to me as musical experiences and using them in the process of improvisation had not yet taken whole. I mean, I was still trying to play like Fats Waller or like Teddy Wilson or try to do what I heard someone else do so, I'll because I was trying to find out how to do it and not realizing until much later that maybe I should sort of concentrate on something which was mine my way of thinking and luckily for me. I was beginning to do this naturally simply because I couldn't do my hand wasn't large enough to stretch tense and wasn't there when they were things that I couldn't physically do so I had to do something else. I found in talking to older musicians that this was very acceptable. This is what they wanted me to do. I said, well, you know, you don't want to be a second-rate whoever I'm a Fats Waller somebody Get you know, you want to be a first-rate billy Taylor. So I mean try to find out what that's all about. And so I began to explore things as a player and be in the right to compose a little tunes and do things and actually work with some of the musicians who were my colleagues and I remember one occasion while I was living still living in DC when I was in high school jelly roll Morton the legendary New Orleans jazz pianist composer bought an interest at a nightclub and this nightclub was right in the heart of the African-American section of town. And so every time I'd go to the Lincoln Theater, I would pass right by this nightclub. It's called a jungle in I never went in there because he was old. I mean I didn't his old guy. I don't want to hear that stuff. That's corny. You know, I'm going to hear what the younger guys are doing. I'm going to get into that and so friend of mine young pianist who couple of years older than I and the whole lot smarter. Our guy named Johnny Malachi said hey, we're going over to here jelly roll tonight once you come on so I don't want to hear you know, they'll come on come on. It's all of us are going so about 5 p.m. As we're all I guess Johnny was the oldest so I can he must have been all of 16 or something like that. You know, we're all too young to be in a nightclub. But you know anyway were there and so we're sitting at this table close to the piano and jelly roll Morton fancied himself as an entrepreneur and a person who was a smart businessman and so forth. So he had bought an interest in this club. He wasn't just working there. He owned part of the community interest in the club. So one of his Partners said jelly, we have some piano plays a whole table full of piano plays came to hear you play tonight. So he looked over there saying nothing but kids and so she yeah, but they all piano plays jelly roll was very arrogant guy and so he came over and he was interesting interesting. I had a diamond in his tooth and I don't know that was about but it was a diamond and I he was very well dressed but the style was not up to date. I mean it, you know, you go to hear Duke Ellington or some of these guys were sharp and height of fashion and everything and this guy's clothes were very obviously. Well Taylor's and everything and look at but they were all doing the style wasn't what guys were wearing, you know, and so you know it yeah old guy, you know, so we were sitting there kind of, you know, nonplussed trying to be cool at that age and he came over and looked at us and kind of needed and said yeah play this it's a town began to play and we couldn't He'd this guy could play really the style that he played I still can't play and if he did the what he did was to sound like the whole New Orleans man. I could hear the trumpet. I could hear the trombone and I could hear the clarinet playing the album of God. Oh this guy only that's what is the other hand. He's doing this with two hands and besides he was playing in Keys which were in those days very difficult for me to play and be a good team keeps like that. We're playing an E flat and B flat and being very happy if we could get through with d flat or something, you know, but he was doing all these things and and anyone who plays piano knows that the stretch from B to D sharp is a long one. I mean, you're gonna have a big hand to do that and he was dropping his hand and playing all these things. So I got a very good lesson in listening to him for that evening. And the lesson was that even though I still didn't want. I personally play that style because I wanted to play things which were more contemporary. He was doing things that I physically and mentally first of all I haven't thought of it and I feel if I had thought of it. I physically couldn't play it. So that really sent me back into the wood shed. So I began to practice and try to work on some of his music and other people's music and I wrecked I really in listening to his music realized that Earl Hines who I was also listening to had obviously been influenced by him and that other pianists that whose work I admire who were more contemporary in those days where people who had obviously been influenced by this guy, so I began to listen to their things more carefully and try to isolate those things. And so I would hear Earl Hines doing something like this. Hi is was an interesting guy and I found out later one of the reasons he played with that kind of force and that kind of agility was because he was trying to be heard over a 15 piece band. And in those days Mike's weren't what they are today. And so he got it he developed a style which was in those days called his trumpet style of piano, which was very much like very reminiscent too many people of Louis Armstrong. He was doing on the piano what Louis Armstrong was doing on the trumpet in some respects and I saw it was a very accessible style. He played for dances and played in a lot of places. It was very exciting to listen to it as you can hear. So I was particularly inspired by wanting to do things with that kind of technique and so forth and was really beginning to work quite hard at doing specific things when I graduated from high school and went on to Virginia State College. And I was a sociology major because my father decided that musician didn't make enough money to support themselves and all the musicians he knew and he knew a lot of them and he said, you know, if you want to want to go to college I'll send you to college but you know, you got to get some educated in something that you can earn a living at cuz you're my oldest son and I have no intention of supporting you for the rest of your life. So I said, okay, so I went to Virginia state major in sociology and that seems like a good thing to get into I was interested in sociology and history and a lot of other things and so for two years I was a sociology major but I was I took every music course I could get into as an elective. I was singing in the choir and playing in the band. So in the at the end of my sophomore year just before I was going to die. What I was going to do as a junior one of my my Harmony in theory teacher, dr. Undine more called me into her office and said Taylor. What is your major? So I said sociology she said wrong. So from that point on I was a music Major my father objected to this very strenuously as a matter of fact when I told I went home actually I was working in the summer. I had a playing with a local band down in Richmond and Petersburg Virginia state is located Petersburg, Virginia in Richmond. There was a band any Layton another man called Johnson's happy Pals and so between the two bands I could earn a little money and I enrolled in summer school had a little job. So a lot of things were happening at radio show a lot of stuff was going on down there. I think it paid for the radio show I just went in and did it I went went down to there was a I never will forget the station was WP ID And so I went in to this radio station one day they played everything but Jazz and so I went in to see who's running this thing. I said you guys play a lot of country and western and gospel and every play everything. We don't you play some jazz. So he said well, we don't have any records. So I said, I'll play some jazz for you. He said fine. Okay. He never said anything about money. So I just went in and played, you know, two or three times a week. He's very happy to have me but he never paid me anything. So it's nice experience. I didn't know I didn't have sense enough to ask for any money I guess but it was very nice and it's very it was my first radio experience and I learned how to at least announce the pieces that I was playing and then try to get something going and while I was a student at Virginia state I met a man who had a tremendous influence on both my life and my career is name was Joe Jones. He was the original drummer with the original Count Basie band Joe Jones for some reason took a liking to He just adopted me sort of a surrogate father and at that moment. He just decided the some guys the way he met me was that a couple of guys that we're all standing around the Bandstand and a couple of guys that my man said to him because he had been talking to them. Hey won't you let our piano player sit in and I say come on man. Couple Count Basie's the piano player. I'm not sitting in advance and so but they talked to him and he actually got Basie to let me sit in so I you know at the age of 17 satin with the The Count Basie man and got to play with Lester Young and people that I had heard on records and is like died and gone to heaven. It was wonderful and but that was when I met Joe Jones and so years later about three four years later after I graduated and gone to New York. He remembered me and so I went to New York as Just to sort of find myself as a musician and I figured if I'm very good and if I'm very lucky I will get to New York and somebody will hear me and you know one of these days I'll get to hear I get to play with some of these legendary people like Ben Webster and but Clayton and Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins and those kind of folks down on 52nd Street. So to start the process when I got there, I went to a place that I knew one. Could Jam where it was a place where everybody went to jam in Harlem place called minton's and was up on a hundred eighteen Street and I knew a couple of musicians who told me that they went there when they came to Washington and so forth. And so I went looking for them there. So the first night I was there. I came to New York on a Friday night. I'll never forget. I came to New York on a Friday night dropped my bags at a relative's house went directly to mittens. So it was about when I got to Benton's it was about Nine o'clock. And in those days the evenings entertainment started about nine and went to for in those kind of clubs. And so nine o'clock. I got there because I figured well. Hey they're going to start and I'll get to talk to somebody. So just as I went in the band, we're starting to play. So after the first set I cornered the piano player and said hey, you know, my name is Billy Taylor. I just came to New York, you know, I play the piano and she would like to sit in in those days. It was very easy to sit and you just ask a guy and it was impolite for him not to let you say that you know, so I mean they if you could play at all but this guy didn't know me he didn't know what I could play or not and I was a kid so he said well, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah in a minute. He says couple of other guys here that want to play too. So I hung around all night. I mean it would be placed it. I never every time I would think that well maybe he's going to let me play some other piano player would go up and play and it seemed like nothing but piano players in the room that night who weren't working there. And so the About it was I didn't know this but the last set was coming up. I knew it was getting late and I really wanted to play Because by now the Bandstand was full of players. I mean the early in the evening was just the regular band and so it would been a nice chance to kind of show off and play something but now the stage was full of guys. I mean you had five or six saxophone players a couple of trumpet players in the guitarist and you know, so the solos took forever to get around to the piano player, you know, and so the idea that that of what I wanted to do had completely escaped me by now. So I said well, okay, you know, I'll come back another night to myself but finally the guy for some reason others. Hey, come on and so I went up and sat in and as I said in the one of my favorite players came in now, this is a guy if he had four bars on a Duke Ellington record. I bought it because he was a great Remember, I used to play tenor badly, but I knew good 10 of when I heard it and this Ben Webster was one of my all-time favorite players. So I said wow, look at the play with Ben Webster. So I'm playing, you know, I didn't get any solos anything. I'm just playing an accompaniment to the all these horn players. So he came over a little closer to the piano when I was playing and took you so long and so forth. So after the set was over he stopped me I was going down and I didn't have nerve enough to say anything to him. But he said, what's your name? So I told him I said, well you doing I said, well, I just came in town. I'm you know looking for work. So I said fine. Listen tomorrow's Saturday. It's not a good night. Why don't you come down to the 3 Deuces? I'm working at three Deuces on 52nd Street come down on Sunday. Well, he said I'd like to see what you sound like in my group. I said wow. Yeah. Okay, so I came down. It's the Saturday took forever to go by but finally it was Sunday and I went to the 3 Deuces now three Deuces was in New York at that time. There were between the in the one block between 5th and 6th Avenue on 52nd Street. We're 20 clubs 10 on either side of the the street was a legendary was the history of jazz. I mean you had people like Billy Holladay Coleman Hawkins Lester Young Dizzy Gillespie Roy Eldridge whole bunch of guys that were in the Chicago seeing like Jimmy mcpartland Sidney bechet from from New Orleans will be De Paris from New Orleans mayor's mesirow. I mean any number of guys it all kind any kind of style of jazz you wanted to We're almost at any time you went was in one of those ten clubs. And so and besides that as a bonus down in the next block there were about four clubs in the the Hickory House and and Kelly Stables and a couple of others. So this is the place that I had hoped I would get to so here I am two days in town I go in and it's a dark little blue these places used to be speakeasies. They were in the bottom. And in those days the 52nd Street were Brownstones about three story buildings and in on the ground floor, you know used to knock on the on the Lewis said me, you know, the guy will let your head and so but by this time it's free so you can you can go in and and you know spend like 50 cents for a beer or something like that. And so it was wonderful, but it was very dark. So I went in and I'm trying to I see the band stand up here and I did I'm so excited. I don't even notice who's playing there. So I go in and as I'm walking toward the Bandstand to sit in because I've seen Ben Webster outside and he's told me to come on in now. And so I'm on my way to the Man's dead and someone grabs me by the coat and I've it's The Pianist from Washington that I know her name was Norma Shepherds at the time. She lived in Washington. She was the best jazz pianist are very much like Mary Lou Williams and so forth. So she was sitting in this club and I was surprised I said, hey, how you doing? So forth and I said, but hey, I'm I've got to go and I want to play she said fine. I want you to meet some friends of mine. This is mr. Jones. Mr. Smith. Mr. Tatum is the okay. So every I you know couldn't be no I went up and and played what you know, I as best I could and it turned out actually to be Autumn. He was the it was the first time I met him. He was the Tree or the Art Tatum Trio was playing opposite Ben Webster. And so the first set was okay because I didn't know it was Tatum, but then then when I came back and realize it was Tatum that I really panicked. So I'm sure the rest of the I said in for another set and it wasn't didn't work out too. Well because I was really nervous by then, but I asked Todd Ivy many years later. I became his Protege and I asked him I said, how did the that first night when I played it the 3 Deuces out of town. He said was fast, so Very kind but Art Tatum sounded to my ear something like this. I'd like to do one more piece and what this one of the principal aspects of jazz. And remember I Define Jazz as being a way of playing in a repertoire of pieces that defines that way of playing as it has developed over many years through many styles. One of the principal means of that development has been through the process of improvisation and years ago. I was asked to improvise a piece based on three notes and it's become a permanent part of my repertoire is one of my compositions that I like to play and it gets back to what I played when I first began, which is a jazz walls the group that I was performing for. All those years ago was called the National Council for the Arts and government and so say they said can you Improvise something on our initials in CAG. Well, the N is kind of hard to find except on Steinway here CAG. Kind of sounds like that. This is what I did with it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope I've left you with just a personal look at music which I feel is the most important music of the 20th century. We created it in this country. It's something which we should be very proud of it is something which is recognized all over the world as being music of the highest quality. It is something which people have defected from other places like Cuba like the Soviet Union like behind the Iron Curtain when there was one to come to this land of freedom and be able to express themselves. If I as I have all afternoon without fear of having someone saying you can't say that you can't play that so I think it's something that we should treasure. I think it's something that in this country where we have many social problems where we may have many other kinds of problems. We have something that I think is an antidote for some of the problems that we have and I think Something it says you may not be aware of the fact, but I'm 72 years old and the time that I have spent playing jazz has kept me feeling looking and sounding like this. Thank you.