The past is filled with people who aren't traditionally thought of as fantastic singers singing these songs that capture people; songs like 'Louie Louie.' I just aim toward that, and I think I've gotten better at it.
My grandfather was Orthodox, and he was religious, but neither of my parents were. Of course, as they got older, it seems like they get more religious the older they get, even though they're still not practicing Jews.
My goal has always been to make classic records, classic albums. Sometimes the recording process and the era it was recorded in means the production leans in a particular way, but to me they are all part of the same process.
If you told me to sit in a room, and you had a million dollars cash stacked right there and said, 'Don't move, don't twitch, don't do anything,' without a doubt, the million dollars would be mine.
I can appreciate that on one side, but we have to remember that the system is designed corruptly, and works against us, so you cant convict those who can benefit from the system, because its not neccesarily their fault.
We heard later through the grapevine that we were being compared to the Furious 5, and because of that we were getting feedback that they were saying that we werent all that, that we were copying them... blah blah blah.
We have to keep the momentum going in the economy. And we have to make sure that we give small businesses as much cash and liquidity as possible so they have the confidence to hire that next worker.
One of my officers said to me that Trinidad and Tobago is seen like an ATM card... you come in with the card and you come back out with cash. It cannot happen anymore. It just cannot happen.
I go for as much feeling as I can rather than show what I can do up and down the neck. I don't play to show people ability.
Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service.
My ears won't fool me. Even when I do a session on digital, we still warm it up somewhere in the process, in mastering or mixing, running the signal through some tubes somewhere.
I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists.
By the time I get done with my fans and my music and my kids and my family and my fiance and my horses, well, they suffer too, but, I don't really have much time left to do anything else.
After that I won a prize, I was with a group of ancient music of Spain that they helped me a lot with a grant, you see, during three years. And so I made my debut in 1944 and I found myself helping my family, it was a very poor family.
Obviously everybody knows that I'm an original songwriter and I got my band. And the guys in 'Sugar Money,' no matter what, are part of my family and they always got something to do with me, and I don't care if they just hang out with me.
I'm nosey, and I have a great imagination. So it's not necessarily things I have to go through, but it's things people I know or my family is going through, and I hear about it, and I think, 'That sounds like a great song.'
I've got my feet on the ground because I've got a lovely family waiting for me when I get home, even though they're not my flesh and blood. I haven't got children. That's my only regret, I suppose.
I took time off from school and traveled to Italy when I was 19, living with my extended family members. I must have slept in 30 different houses those months, taken in by people who'd never even met me.
At the moment I have my family coming out with me on the road. We have our own vehicle and it's more like a family vacation. I just stop, do some gigs, and take off. It's a lot more fun now with the family.
A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.
As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.
