There were no artists in Ossining, which was the home of Sing Sing prison. Most of the parents of the guys I knew were guards there.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I remember the people I knew in prison; I was very fortunate to know them - they came from 1910, 1920, 1930.
I grew up thinking that singing was my security.
My father was very interested in music, and when he and his brothers were young, they had a singing group that used to open for Sam Cooke. There was always music in our house, but there wasn't much art around.
In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.
You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.
So in those days, they were scooping up any young person who could sing and look decent, ah, at the same time.
The Blossoms were actually the first black background singers that did recording sessions in California, but we had to start giving work away. We just couldn't do it all.
There wasn't a lot of live music that you could hear where I came from, which was a small town in southeast Missouri.
When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father.
My mother was a singer, and both of her sisters were singers. There was always music around.