Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, kids,
Speaker 1: you ready like you?
Speaker 2: You ready like you? Everything's ll let's go, we jump,
Speaker 2: let's do it, let's do it. Here we go.
Speaker 3: Suprema Sun Sun Suprema roll Calm Suprema Sun Sun Supremo.
Speaker 4: Roll call, Suprema.
Speaker 3: Sun Sun Supremo, Role Calm, Suprema Son Son Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Questlove, Yeah, and you are you Yeah?
Speaker 1: And that's Team Supreme.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he's forty two.
Speaker 3: Supreme su Suprema roll Calm, Suprema su Suprema roll call.
Speaker 6: My name is Fante Yeah, and I'm gonna keep it
Speaker 6: roll yeah with the Realist President.
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of Arkansas.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son Suprema, roll call, Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 5: Role Call.
Speaker 2: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 7: Yeah, first president I ever met.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh you just reminded me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I haven't filed my taxes yet.
Speaker 3: Suprema So Supremo. Roll call, Suprema So Suprema.
Speaker 8: Roll call paid Bill.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I got to thinking, yeah about my second
Speaker 9: favorite bill.
Speaker 8: Yeah, President Clinton.
Speaker 2: Suprema su.
Speaker 4: Supreme So Suprema roll.
Speaker 5: It's my ear yeah, and it's a special day. Yeah,
Speaker 5: our first press. Yeah, Bill Clinton all Day.
Speaker 3: Roll call Supremo, So Son Supremo, roll call, Supremo, Son Son.
Speaker 4: Supremo, roll call.
Speaker 10: My name is Bill. Yeah, Yeah, I know the drill. Yeah,
Speaker 10: I'm glad to be here. Yeah, calls music is there?
Speaker 10: Take it up?
Speaker 4: Sun Sun Subpreme roll call Subpremo.
Speaker 3: Sun Sun Subprema roll Calm Subprema, Son Sun Subpremo, roll
Speaker 3: call Subprema Son Sun.
Speaker 4: Subprema roll call.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Congratulations, we have our first.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: I will say, it's it's a point. We just do
Speaker 1: a Griselda right exactly. It's amazing how the world works sometimes. Uh,
Speaker 1: for no particular reason. You know, we we've been away
Speaker 1: from each other for three years and decided, hey, it
Speaker 1: might be cool for us to get back together and
Speaker 1: do some stuff in person.
Speaker 2: And then life throws you a curveball.
Speaker 1: And I I will say, probably no less than twenty
Speaker 1: four hours ago.
Speaker 2: We got a call straight up.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest with you, because I was preparing
Speaker 1: for another guest, and right before I went to sleep
Speaker 1: last night, I read my itinery I'm like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that's tomorrow. I thought that was like in the future,
Speaker 1: because when you threw it at me, I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: this will never happen.
Speaker 2: So like no, we all went like what.
Speaker 1: February thirtieth of Yah, nineteen seventy six, Like that's going
Speaker 1: to happen.
Speaker 2: I will be saying, yeah, this is happening.
Speaker 1: And our guest today is the very first time that
Speaker 1: you're nervous. Yeah, yeah, this is the very first time
Speaker 1: I stepped in the voter booth to exerciseise.
Speaker 5: Y rightsident voted for your age.
Speaker 4: Time.
Speaker 8: I wasn't Oh the second time.
Speaker 2: Wait, how I don't know what your age is.
Speaker 1: On papill I am eighty six years old, Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes you seem younger than me.
Speaker 2: Then when you have a beard.
Speaker 8: It looks like you're accountant, right exactly.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how old you are. But you know, my.
Speaker 7: First vote was for ducacis believe it or not, that's
Speaker 7: how old you are.
Speaker 2: That's how old you are. Come up anyway.
Speaker 1: Live in CDM studios is where we are, and we
Speaker 1: are very honored to have music lover musician uh and incidentally,
Speaker 1: are the forty second president of these United States, William
Speaker 1: Jefferson Clinton one A question to.
Speaker 8: What is happening?
Speaker 2: So, how are you today?
Speaker 10: I'm good, I'm better now. This is I didn't find
Speaker 10: out about this much before you.
Speaker 4: You were like an hour before.
Speaker 2: Oh, let's let's hit down just a casual question, like.
Speaker 1: What what did you do this morning? Like what's your
Speaker 1: morning routine like as of lately?
Speaker 10: Well lately, I get up in the morning and I
Speaker 10: read the papers. I'm old five, I'll read the papers.
Speaker 10: Get my phone and I read the papers I didn't read.
Speaker 10: I read my local West Sister County paper and the
Speaker 10: New York Times and paper. Then I read the Washington
Speaker 10: Post online, and then I look and see what other
Speaker 10: articles there are, and then I work puzzles for a
Speaker 10: while because it's good for you. Like I do that
Speaker 10: word puzzle in New York Times every day.
Speaker 1: Are you a wordle person or a New York Times
Speaker 1: crossword person or I.
Speaker 10: Don't do that. I only do the cross word on Sunday.
Speaker 10: But I do wordle, and I do the wordle nice,
Speaker 10: and I do the spelling Bee, the spelling Bee every day.
Speaker 1: I would like to think that I have an expansive vocabulary,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's so frustrating. I give up after
Speaker 1: like the seventh word unpaid bill. You strike me as
Speaker 1: a person that can at least get to fifteen.
Speaker 9: I can I go in on the the this one. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I can't stop. It's just like you can.
Speaker 10: It's pretty hard to do.
Speaker 8: It was hard today. There was a lot of there was.
Speaker 8: Every time there's an X, what, it's like, what the
Speaker 8: hell's going to do?
Speaker 2: What's a vow for today?
Speaker 8: Well, there's a bunch of vwel so it's a.
Speaker 2: What's in the middle?
Speaker 9: Oh a, oh, well wait, and you'll say that's hard.
Speaker 9: It was like I'm gonna no one's gonna listen. It's
Speaker 9: like oxidation annotation notation there too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, during the pandemic, you'll be shocked at you know,
Speaker 1: what you do for entertainment, especially because I was on
Speaker 1: a farm with new cable. So that's when I started
Speaker 1: my rabbit holing inside of crosswords.
Speaker 2: And that sort of thing. So you're a word o person.
Speaker 10: Too, Yeah, I started that later. I did that the
Speaker 10: spelling bee for a long time and now normally around
Speaker 10: dinner time, He'll and I'll get back together and between
Speaker 10: the two of us we can get them all. What
Speaker 10: so we have a conspiracy for spelling baby we didn't
Speaker 10: do it yesterday, and I didn't get them all yesterday either.
Speaker 1: So you like to do it at nighttime, around dinner
Speaker 1: or first thing in the I'm the first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning person.
Speaker 10: I like to do it first thing in the morning,
Speaker 10: and then whichever ones I don't have, I'll just put
Speaker 10: it away and think about it and start working. Because
Speaker 10: I do. I call people in the morning when I'm
Speaker 10: fresh and thoughtful, and then I'm trying to finish two
Speaker 10: books I've been working on and it's been very frustrating,
Speaker 10: so I do that in the middle of the day.
Speaker 10: I take time off and take away. I try to
Speaker 10: take a walk every day.
Speaker 2: My day is determined on if I'm able to solve wordle.
Speaker 10: One thing that frustrates me. The other day I got
Speaker 10: three of the five letters in order off the first work,
Speaker 10: which I put in a rose. And I got three
Speaker 10: of the first and I got R O and then E,
Speaker 10: and I literally went through five permutations before I got
Speaker 10: to write one. I was going nothing.
Speaker 2: I wanted to throw your right.
Speaker 10: It was broke, I think was the wordle. And I
Speaker 10: went through all you know wrote I don't know any
Speaker 10: other words. That's what makes you feel you don't know
Speaker 10: what he's dumb, unlucky, what's going on.
Speaker 1: It has a way of determining how good or rotten
Speaker 1: your day is going to be. So I try to
Speaker 1: do it now in the afternoon.
Speaker 10: So it can't spoil your morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: See, you walked in with two albums and being as
Speaker 1: though we're jazz fanatics here at Quest of Supreme, where
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see what you brought to the table.
Speaker 2: Why did you choose.
Speaker 10: This is an old Sunny Rollins album. You can see
Speaker 10: I had to type it up. I see, I had
Speaker 10: it forever and it's the first one he did on
Speaker 10: Brazilian music. I once told Rollins that I love the
Speaker 10: album he did in Harlem in the late nineties. He
Speaker 10: said it wasn't worth of them, and I said, what
Speaker 10: was the matter with it? He said, I didn't learn anything.
Speaker 10: I didn't do anything new. There. He is, you know,
Speaker 10: at his age, and he's still doing things new. So
Speaker 10: this is great.
Speaker 1: What's the name of that album, President, It's Sounny Rowlings brings.
Speaker 8: The jazz new rhythm from South America.
Speaker 10: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: Do you often get disappointed when you meet notable people
Speaker 1: that have done things amazing that you think are amazing,
Speaker 1: and then they're just dismissive of it. Like that often
Speaker 1: happens here at the show, where you know, I say
Speaker 1: the thing he did, and they'll just be like, man, whatever.
Speaker 10: One of the things that I really loved when I
Speaker 10: was president is nearly anybody, I'll come play for you
Speaker 10: if you ask me. And one day I looked up.
Speaker 10: I was sitting at my desk and I looked up,
Speaker 10: and then we had the door open to the outside.
Speaker 10: Dave Brewbeck was standing there and he was, you know,
Speaker 10: getting you know, some award. Not the Kennedy Center War, Oh,
Speaker 10: he got the National Medal of Arts that you're So
Speaker 10: I went out and shook hands with him, and I
Speaker 10: told him how much I liked him, And I said,
Speaker 10: you know, when I was fifteen years old, you've played
Speaker 10: about seventy miles from home. So I went to your
Speaker 10: concert in Arkansas because he was friends with the guy
Speaker 10: who was a great music teacher there, jazz fanatic. He
Speaker 10: looked at me and kind of skeptically said, he said,
Speaker 10: besides take five, what's your people? What's your favorite rubeks On?
Speaker 10: I thought always giving me? I said blue Rondo. He said,
Speaker 10: nobody knows that. I said, it's a great song. He said,
Speaker 10: hum the bridge.
Speaker 4: Oh, he's one of those people was so.
Speaker 10: I hummed the Bridge for it, and three days later
Speaker 10: he sent me a great autograph copy of the chart
Speaker 10: and that still hangs in my music room today. Wow,
Speaker 10: just because I knew the Bridge from BLUEO.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's terrifying.
Speaker 8: Yo, that's the one you know, don't want?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: What does that?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Does that a lot of where I'll just take the
Speaker 1: compliment and be like, you know, because they'll say something
Speaker 1: skill like, yo, man, I have botle and then to
Speaker 1: reach the person that actually wants evidence that you really believe,
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, what if it winds up being
Speaker 1: a pie in the face moment and then you can't say, then,
Speaker 1: how's the conversation going?
Speaker 2: I'm glad you knew his history, right.
Speaker 10: Me too.
Speaker 2: What other records did you bring in there?
Speaker 10: I got Dizzy Gillespie's New Way, which also has a
Speaker 10: couple of resilient songs on it, including the Morning of
Speaker 10: the Carnival from Black Corfea, which is one of my
Speaker 10: favorite songs. I think it's one of the most beautiful
Speaker 10: songs that were written a.
Speaker 5: Love Brazilian music. Mister President was like, my favorite. Oh
Speaker 5: I'm like this, No, no, I said the music, not that.
Speaker 10: This is a record of Jimmy Smith. I think he
Speaker 10: is the greatest sas organists who ever lived. And he
Speaker 10: used to play at a place called the Cellar Door
Speaker 10: in Washington when I was in college, so I would
Speaker 10: go and listen to him, and the first time he
Speaker 10: started playing, I thought that organ and was going to
Speaker 10: walk out of this room all by itself. Oh, he
Speaker 10: was unbelievable. What year was this, sixty four, sixty five,
Speaker 10: something like that. And this is my favorite jazz samba record.
Speaker 10: This is the first record done by Stan Gatz and
Speaker 10: Charlie Birds out of Brazil.
Speaker 7: So when did you fall in love with Brazilian jazz?
Speaker 10: I was interested in jazz, and I started listening to
Speaker 10: bigger jazz bands when I was six or seven years old,
Speaker 10: and my folks had a record player and they'd go
Speaker 10: away and I'd just get these records, just record after
Speaker 10: record and sit there on the floor and listen to them.
Speaker 2: So was your parents collection?
Speaker 10: Yeah? And then I started ordering Downbeating magazine when I
Speaker 10: was in grade school, and because they asked me, I
Speaker 10: started out on clarinet, and they asked me to shift
Speaker 10: to saxophone because the school needed a saxophone in the band.
Speaker 10: And I fell in love with and I started reading Downbeat,
Speaker 10: and I read it all through high school, and when
Speaker 10: I could, i'd supplement the record collection.
Speaker 6: You know, did you have aspirations of being a professional
Speaker 6: musician or did you just love it?
Speaker 10: Absolutely? Yeah, I would. I went to summer camp at
Speaker 10: the university and they had some good teachers, and I
Speaker 10: would sometimes play twelve hours a day. I inflayed, my
Speaker 10: guns were practically bleeding, and I loved it. But when
Speaker 10: I was sixteen, I looked in the mirror one day
Speaker 10: and I said, will you ever be as good as culturing?
Speaker 2: How are you the president? Talking yourself out of your
Speaker 2: own dream? That young?
Speaker 10: Oh? I didn't talk to myself. I was conflicted. I
Speaker 10: wanted to do three things in my life. I wanted
Speaker 10: to be a doctor that helped people that didn't have
Speaker 10: access to healthcare. I didn't want to, you know, be
Speaker 10: a rich doctor. I wanted to get out there. I
Speaker 10: wanted to be Paul Farmer. When I grew up, I
Speaker 10: wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a musician,
Speaker 10: and I wanted to be in politics because I could
Speaker 10: see when I was a boy how much conflict there
Speaker 10: still was in America. So I remember like it was yesterday.
Speaker 10: I was sixteen looking in a mirror, just begun to
Speaker 10: shave felt big. And the reason I asked this question
Speaker 10: is you couldn't make a living as a jazz musician
Speaker 10: in the sixties unless you did the clubs. You know,
Speaker 10: nobody had these massive record contracts. You didn't a jazz
Speaker 10: musicians didn't feel, you know what like Kenny g later
Speaker 10: made a lot of money, you know, going around. You
Speaker 10: couldn't make a living unless you did the clubs. And
Speaker 10: so your chances of becoming addicted to drugs were roughly
Speaker 10: three times your chances of having a successful family and
Speaker 10: raising kids that were healthy. I mean, you had to.
Speaker 10: It was a big risk. As Cole Traning and lots
Speaker 10: of others found out, he was a genius.
Speaker 2: Have you ever got to witness him in person?
Speaker 10: No, I never heard Cold Training in person. I do
Speaker 10: have at home an autographed album that a friend of
Speaker 10: mine found for me, where his face is like has
Speaker 10: gone into running paint, fascinating looking album. I never heard him.
Speaker 10: I never heard gets I did herb Alfred he gets
Speaker 10: his last saxophone and he had it in a safe.
Speaker 10: So he sent me a note when I got elected,
Speaker 10: and he said, if you come out here, I'll let
Speaker 10: you play it. But I never got to do it.
Speaker 10: But anyway, I just thought that it wasn't worth the risk.
Speaker 10: And I did love it, but I had a sort
Speaker 10: of troubled home growing up, and I knew i'd be
Speaker 10: disappointed in my life if I didn't, you know, have
Speaker 10: a child and do a halfway decent job.
Speaker 5: And a musicians not the talary that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you left Arkansas? Like how
Speaker 1: long did you live there before you went to college?
Speaker 10: From my birth, I was born in a little town
Speaker 10: of Arkansas, and then we moved to a bigger town
Speaker 10: when I was six after the first grade, and I
Speaker 10: stayed there until I graduated from high school and I
Speaker 10: went to college in Washington for four years. Then I
Speaker 10: lived in England for two years, which was a.
Speaker 2: Great part of What part of England did you live?
Speaker 10: I was in school in Oxford, so I got a
Speaker 10: scholarship to go to school there, and that was great
Speaker 10: because it was in the middle of all the Vietnam
Speaker 10: War to do, you know? And I kept waiting to
Speaker 10: be drafted every month and I was called once, but
Speaker 10: the law allowed you to finish the year you were
Speaker 10: in if you were in school. And then the lottery
Speaker 10: came in. I got a high number.
Speaker 5: Did you go to the club scene a lot in
Speaker 5: London when you were living there and going? No?
Speaker 10: But I went to. Like we were talking about concerts,
Speaker 10: I tried to find whatever music I could, and I
Speaker 10: remember the most memorable one for me was when Mahaja
Speaker 10: Jackson played the Albert Hall, which is this great old
Speaker 10: Victorian venue, and you know, the country England was deeply divided,
Speaker 10: America was deeply divided. Everybody was upset, kids were cynical,
Speaker 10: and all of a sudden, I go to the but
Speaker 10: I was determined to hear Mohata Jackson. So I go
Speaker 10: with a friend who knew nothing about her music. I said,
Speaker 10: you're going to love this. You thank me for the
Speaker 10: rest of your life. So were we got a seat,
Speaker 10: you know, pretty far back. But I looked around and
Speaker 10: most of the people there were young people. And she
Speaker 10: started singing, and by about the third song, half the
Speaker 10: audience was crying I mean, she was so enormously powerful.
Speaker 10: She just was She just radiated her.
Speaker 5: Still gospel music, right, you think to be a bunch
Speaker 5: of kids.
Speaker 10: Then at the end of the performance, they stormed the
Speaker 10: stage and they were like seven or eight deep right
Speaker 10: on the stage, screaming like they were groupies at a
Speaker 10: rock concert and begging her to keep singing and begging her.
Speaker 10: And she sang another song or two and then finally
Speaker 10: had to leave. You know, but and she was just
Speaker 10: her standing alone on the stage. You know, the way
Speaker 10: she did it was amazing. It was one of the
Speaker 10: most amazing concerts I ever saw. Just she was something.
Speaker 1: Well I wanted to know, like what your music experience
Speaker 1: was in Arkansas, like because you seem pretty open minded
Speaker 1: to just art and all that stuff, Like how does
Speaker 1: one do that from Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well it was we weren't all the same. You know,
Speaker 10: it's not like it even today. It's more well to
Speaker 10: the right of where it was in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 10: Most Southern states are in the small towns in rural
Speaker 10: areas because of what's happened to the information ecosystem and
Speaker 10: a lot of other things. But I remember when I
Speaker 10: went to the BREWBYX concert. I was telling you about that.
Speaker 10: He was friends with the band director down there who
Speaker 10: had worked with Stan Kenton and when they did all
Speaker 10: that groundbreaking musical work. You know, in the fifties, there
Speaker 10: were always chances to do that. I've Ray Charles once
Speaker 10: when he was kind of on the slow circuit in
Speaker 10: a little venue in western Arkansas. When I was in college,
Speaker 10: I heard Ray Charles sing where Marion Anderton did in
Speaker 10: Constitution Hall. She wanted to sing in Constitution Hall. You
Speaker 10: remember that Daughters of American Revolution drove her out. So
Speaker 10: Harold Ikey's the interior secretary for Roosevelt, whose son worked
Speaker 10: for me in the White House. Amazing. He gave her
Speaker 10: the Lincoln Memorial, the famous When Ray Charles came in
Speaker 10: nineteen sixty seven, he sang in Constitutional Hall. And I
Speaker 10: call this woman that I had just met, and on
Speaker 10: a lark, I asked if she wanted to go to
Speaker 10: this concert. She was about six feet tall, and we
Speaker 10: got we can. By the time I got the tickets,
Speaker 10: we had to sit way up in the back on
Speaker 10: the second floor and we were only there were fewer
Speaker 10: than ten white people there. Yes, it was unbelievable, though
Speaker 10: I never forget he played, you know, his repertoire, and
Speaker 10: he saved Georgia till near the last, and he plays
Speaker 10: the introduction on the piano and didn't do anything. He
Speaker 10: holds it in the crowds and then finally he just
Speaker 10: reaches up to microphone he said Georgia like that, and
Speaker 10: the crowd went nuts, just nuts, and it was And
Speaker 10: I was so excited at that Ray Charles concert. I
Speaker 10: remember it was June the twenty fourth, nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 10: I so remember where it was that I stayed up
Speaker 10: till three o'clock in the morning. I couldn't go to sleep,
Speaker 10: and I went out and raided three in three miles
Speaker 10: so I could sleep a little. And I saved that
Speaker 10: ticket stub for I don't know ten fifteen years. I
Speaker 10: kept it in my billfa wow. And I was so
Speaker 10: grateful that I finally got to meet him, you know,
Speaker 10: when I was president, and we became friends. And Quincy
Speaker 10: Jones was helpful to me because he was a friend
Speaker 10: of mine. And you know, he and Charles knew each
Speaker 10: other in Seattle when Quincy was fourteen and Charles was seventeen,
Speaker 10: and Ray Charles got himself all the way from Central Florida,
Speaker 10: where he was a boy as a blind man, because
Speaker 10: he was not blind in his early years, but he
Speaker 10: was blind, and he took a bus. He said he
Speaker 10: wanted to get as far away from Central Florida as
Speaker 10: he could without having to leave the country. So he
Speaker 10: went to Seattle, and Quincy said, you know, I decided
Speaker 10: I could make it music. I mean, here's this blond
Speaker 10: guy who's seventeen, and he's got his own apartment. He's
Speaker 10: got three suits in the closet, and he's got a girlfriend.
Speaker 10: And that was a great story, and I genuinely came
Speaker 10: to not only admire, but have an enormous affection for
Speaker 10: Ray Charleson a couple of weeks before he died, and
Speaker 10: this is long after I left the White House and
Speaker 10: I knew he was sick, his young staff person called
Speaker 10: my office and said, Ray wants to talk to President Clinton.
Speaker 10: Can you do it? And I said sure, anytime, you know.
Speaker 10: So he called me, and I knew he was sick,
Speaker 10: and it was pretty well public by then. He didn't
Speaker 10: talk about any of that. He had no interest in
Speaker 10: talking to He said, I'm just calling a few of
Speaker 10: my friends. Feoful, I want to talk to, you know,
Speaker 10: one more time, and we shot the breeze for like
Speaker 10: twenty minutes.
Speaker 5: What did that feel like if even you going to
Speaker 5: your younger self and realized that Ray Charles called you
Speaker 5: like and he wanted to call you before some things happened.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and he knew he was going to die. Yeah,
Speaker 10: but he didn't want to talk about that. He wanted
Speaker 10: to just talk about life with people that he had
Speaker 10: And I forget, I think there were twelve or fifteen
Speaker 10: people he just called that he wanted to talk to.
Speaker 10: And I always thought he was something special.
Speaker 5: What was the moment did you think the music community
Speaker 5: he talked about being friends with Quincy Jones and Ray Charles,
Speaker 5: and I'm curious when they learned that you were beyond
Speaker 5: a passer by.
Speaker 2: Was it like the.
Speaker 5: Sax moment on our Senior? Did everybody realize like he
Speaker 5: is not just a fan, He's a part of his community.
Speaker 10: Well, I got a little of that on Johnny Carson,
Speaker 10: you know with it Johnny Carson was I bombed at
Speaker 10: my speech at the Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 10: and we don't have time for me to explain what
Speaker 10: I bombed?
Speaker 2: And so Carson hen hence Ducacus.
Speaker 10: A woman actually is very interesting the people. This shows
Speaker 10: you the difference in commentary. People that heard the speech
Speaker 10: on the radio were ninety percent positive about it because
Speaker 10: it was not interrupted. I got hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 10: letters from people who are in the radio. But anyway,
Speaker 10: a woman named Amy Baker, who just passed away a
Speaker 10: couple of years ago, a wonderful woman was working for Carson,
Speaker 10: and she called a friend of mine in California and said,
Speaker 10: I think Clinton should come on the show. He said,
Speaker 10: I think Johnny would like him, and he said, he'll
Speaker 10: let me take a ribbon. They talked, and I said,
Speaker 10: and he never lets politicians come on the show anymore,
Speaker 10: so we need him to play something so we can
Speaker 10: use it as an excuse. I think we played Billy Holidays,
Speaker 10: God Bless the Child, and maybe Heartbreak Hotel. We played something,
Speaker 10: but I played anyway, really, and then Carson takes out
Speaker 10: an hour glass and you know what those like three
Speaker 10: minutes was. It turns it up and the sad starts
Speaker 10: running out. And I said, well, I want to thank
Speaker 10: you for giving me a chance to come here and
Speaker 10: finish my speech. So we had a great time and
Speaker 10: then I did our Sinio.
Speaker 5: Okay, so we didn't know about Carson's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, this happened.
Speaker 10: Yes, then uh so our Sineo. You know knew I could.
Speaker 10: It was halfway to be halfway decent if I played
Speaker 10: and I wasn't playing really much. Then I think we
Speaker 10: did my funny Valentine and Summertime. I think that's what
Speaker 10: we played.
Speaker 1: You did Elvis song. I think you did Harbrey tell
Speaker 1: that part. I do remember on the commercial break.
Speaker 10: Well, Elvis was my secret service code name.
Speaker 2: Okay, oh wow, that's when.
Speaker 10: I was running for president. I literally could sing the
Speaker 10: Jordanaires background to every single Elvis Presley song. I remembered
Speaker 10: long sections of dialogue from Love Me Tender and you
Speaker 10: know all that stuff. I liked him, and if you
Speaker 10: saw Baz Lrman's film about him, we did one thing.
Speaker 10: The film finally showed once why Presley was so close
Speaker 10: to the black community and why he deliberately sang in
Speaker 10: the Ghetto and some other songs. He didn't have much politics,
Speaker 10: but he felt pretty strongly about civil rights because he'd
Speaker 10: grown up on the edge of the black neighborhoods in
Speaker 10: Tupelo and and he had, you know, the voice of
Speaker 10: a generation.
Speaker 5: Can't wait for you to see the Little Richard documentary
Speaker 5: where he he Lord Richard says Elvis actually told him
Speaker 5: behind the scenes that you are basically the reason that
Speaker 5: I am here, and no. Richard was like, well he's.
Speaker 2: In all out right.
Speaker 10: Well he was great, Little Richard. I was.
Speaker 6: I was curious to know about the Arsenio performance because
Speaker 6: this was in the nineties, so it's pre Twitter, pre
Speaker 6: you know, going viral, so to speak. So how did
Speaker 6: your team know, like after that performance, what were the
Speaker 6: markers then of like, yo, we killed that, Like how
Speaker 6: did you see the impact of it on your campaign?
Speaker 10: A lot of it was like primp media commentary and
Speaker 10: people are calling in, calling to all your headquarters. You know.
Speaker 10: We used to send out our idea of rapid response
Speaker 10: because we had a system. We had ten thousand people
Speaker 10: throughout the country that we sent fax machine factions to
Speaker 10: every day. We sent them facts as they says, here's
Speaker 10: what we need to push today, and they would call
Speaker 10: their local newspapers, they would call their local radio stations
Speaker 10: and try to get the message out, or they would
Speaker 10: write a letter to their local newspapers. I mean it
Speaker 10: seems so. It seems like creaky today.
Speaker 8: That that wasn't so far away.
Speaker 10: We we were, you know, we did the best we could,
Speaker 10: and you know, I think there were some good things
Speaker 10: about the eighties and the nineties. It's still most towns
Speaker 10: had their own newspapers, and they were pretty much on
Speaker 10: the level. You know, they could be in real right
Speaker 10: wing towns or real liberals towns, but they were built
Speaker 10: newspapers pretty well on the level. And they would give
Speaker 10: you access if you showed up, and they would say
Speaker 10: what you said and then and if they dumped on you,
Speaker 10: they would do it on the editorial page. They wouldn't
Speaker 10: twist the news story. It was very different than that.
Speaker 10: Almost every town of any size had their own locally
Speaker 10: owned radio station. It meant a huge difference. I mean,
Speaker 10: I might not be here if it weren't for that.
Speaker 1: All right, I got a question, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out again with twenty four hour
Speaker 1: less than twenty four hour warning, you don't know like
Speaker 1: what angle we're going to go in. And this brings
Speaker 1: me back to if you remember, on the internet, they
Speaker 1: started this trending question like would you rather have half
Speaker 1: a million dollars or a dinner with jay Z.
Speaker 2: What would you choose?
Speaker 1: And no, But the thing is is, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's either would you rather get wisdom on how to.
Speaker 5: Run the game and create your own.
Speaker 2: Game or just whatever? Just give me the money.
Speaker 1: Money, okay, but the timeout, but I got but my
Speaker 1: question aazy would tell you to take the money.
Speaker 10: No.
Speaker 1: But you know, since we have you here, and I
Speaker 1: feel like at least for the five of us, and
Speaker 1: by the five of us also mean like the community
Speaker 1: that listens to this particular podcast, all of us, I
Speaker 1: feel are either in our pivot moment in our lives
Speaker 1: or in our career, Like all of us do something
Speaker 1: notable here, Like he was part of the Hamilton team,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's been a long time engineer, She's
Speaker 1: been radio hosts, he's been like a hero to many
Speaker 1: in the hip hop community. And now we're kind of
Speaker 1: at this place in our lives where we're sort of
Speaker 1: flirting with leadership roles. And you know, I would like
Speaker 1: to ask you, as a person who sort of volunteered
Speaker 1: for this life, to be a leader in all those things,
Speaker 1: because it comes with a lot from what from the
Speaker 1: outside looking in or I don't know if I'm inside
Speaker 1: thinking I'm outside looking in. It seems like one a
Speaker 1: thankless job to be a leader. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: talking about president. Let's take it down. Why would you
Speaker 1: ever want to subject yourself to having to always think,
Speaker 1: quick on your feet, always having the answer, having to
Speaker 1: whatever the metaphorical term, reach across the aisle, to speak
Speaker 1: to someone, to nuanced a relationship, to do a long
Speaker 1: dinner just for that one person, and you got to
Speaker 1: do it like one hundred times. I guess I'm basically
Speaker 1: asking is like all of us are right now sort
Speaker 1: of at the bottom, looking at whatever our mount Fiji
Speaker 1: or whatever the mountain is that we see, why should
Speaker 1: we want to be a leader, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: what's the motivation?
Speaker 10: Most of life is a social experiment and a social experience.
Speaker 10: So if you feel strongly about something and you want
Speaker 10: to impact your cha answers are much better if you
Speaker 10: can lead a pack that agrees with you. And I
Speaker 10: think that's really important that all these questions no one
Speaker 10: can answer but the person affected. But I think it
Speaker 10: starts with how you keep score. I mean, we all
Speaker 10: keep score, whether we admit or not, we keep score
Speaker 10: on ourselves. I wish I were a little taller. I
Speaker 10: wish I little say, if I'd had Lebron's body, I'd
Speaker 10: have gone a different line of work. That kind of stuff,
Speaker 10: you know, we do that. So if you keep score
Speaker 10: in a way that is at all other directed, then
Speaker 10: if you get a chance to lead, you have to
Speaker 10: do it and people won't resent you if they see
Speaker 10: that it's other directed. I mean to me, I decided
Speaker 10: when I got into this, I said, why are you
Speaker 10: doing this? And I realized I had to face some
Speaker 10: way of keeping score. So I keep score as follows.
Speaker 10: Are people better off when you quit than when you started?
Speaker 10: The children have a broader future? And are things coming
Speaker 10: together instead of falling apart? And if you can answer
Speaker 10: yes to all three of those questions, I think your
Speaker 10: life's a runaway success. Even if you have heartbreak, even
Speaker 10: if you fail, even if you make colossal mistakes, and
Speaker 10: if you make enough decisions and you live long enough,
Speaker 10: you will make mistakes. I think that's it. But if
Speaker 10: you if you keep scoring any way that is other director.
Speaker 10: You want to increase people's love for music, You want
Speaker 10: to increase people's understanding of the social impact of music.
Speaker 10: You want to get people who never thought about how
Speaker 10: America got started to see it through as they can feel.
Speaker 10: And you do, Hamilton, you know you did. Whatever it is.
Speaker 10: There's a price.
Speaker 7: You should be president, So bad news. Guys care about
Speaker 7: other people and not just not just ourselves.
Speaker 2: Hang on a second. We got to let this go.
Speaker 2: I knew it was coming. I knew I was coming
Speaker 2: my team music when I say something brilliant go.
Speaker 5: Ahead, you didn't mean an interrupt miss President. We finished
Speaker 5: with your thought?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Well, as of this taping, you know, we lost, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the most crucial leaders of someone that I
Speaker 1: looked up to because the role that Harry Belafonte played
Speaker 1: and social change, right, you know, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to have to like what I'm previously. What I'm known
Speaker 1: for now is just like hey, a hustler. I'll do
Speaker 1: this job and that job and this project and that project.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm wondering, like at sixty, at seventy,
Speaker 1: like what is my life going to be? And right
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking like, okay, I want to get into philanthropy.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of like working my behind off now
Speaker 1: now so that I can be in the position to
Speaker 1: be that person when I get to my sixties. And
Speaker 1: also I'm also trying to get out the place where
Speaker 1: like I'm writing my future down, like okay, ten years
Speaker 1: from now, I'm gonna do that. I'm now learning a
Speaker 1: lesson where I wake up every day and just like this,
Speaker 1: like this was definitely not on my Bengo cart list,
Speaker 1: like at all, this conversation, but things like this have
Speaker 1: been happening to me almost consistently for the last two years,
Speaker 1: where you know, I'm such a meticulous planner and this
Speaker 1: is what I'm doing. This is how my future is
Speaker 1: going to be, and then universe like kicks over and this, no,
Speaker 1: this is what you're actually going to do. So you know,
Speaker 1: as far as Harry Belafonte's concerned, that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I thought. Okay, that might be the path I go,
Speaker 1: where I plant ideas in people and then they implement
Speaker 1: these things and change happens, be it we Are the world,
Speaker 1: or the civil rights movement or even Beach Street, right,
Speaker 1: even Beach Street.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just you said keeping score, and for me, keeping
Speaker 1: score means that there are two sides, and you have
Speaker 1: to be a coach to do that. And the way
Speaker 1: that politics is now, it's enough to give me pause
Speaker 1: and just be like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, let me just cut a check and.
Speaker 1: Hide in the woods, you know, Like I've never been
Speaker 1: the hide in the woods person, but I brought a
Speaker 1: farm three years ago, thinking like, I need a place
Speaker 1: in the woods to hide in case the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario happens. So me, personally, I'm just on the prespice
Speaker 1: on the line of like, do I have to be
Speaker 1: that person? Do I have to be the heir of
Speaker 1: Bellafante that's no longer here, or do I just hide
Speaker 1: behind somebody here and you do it?
Speaker 2: Like what would you say, because.
Speaker 10: I would say, do you need to do a little
Speaker 10: bit of both? Let me explain what I mean by that.
Speaker 10: Harry Belafani work his way into what you might call
Speaker 10: direct action where he's marching with doctor King. But I
Speaker 10: was thinking that I was telling on hell the way
Speaker 10: drownd here today. I remember one of his earliest movies
Speaker 10: when he was still a Calypso king, and he was
Speaker 10: a beautiful man. God knows he was beautiful, and so
Speaker 10: it's sort of a proto colonial movie. I'm embarrassed I
Speaker 10: can't remember the name of it. But he's a guy
Speaker 10: in the Caribbean. He's interested in what's going on in
Speaker 10: this country, and this white lady sort of falls in
Speaker 10: love with him. And when they did this movie, it
Speaker 10: was a pretty brave thing to do to deal with
Speaker 10: all that. There wasn't many movies dealing with all that.
Speaker 10: So he made his statements in the movie and it was,
Speaker 10: as a matter of fact, a good movie. And he
Speaker 10: did a good thing. And then he used what he
Speaker 10: had earned to start marching and getting involved with these
Speaker 10: other things and doing it. I want to say something
Speaker 10: almost contradicts what I told you earlier. I do think
Speaker 10: you have to know how you're going to keep score,
Speaker 10: and then you lay out a plan. But people ask
Speaker 10: me all the time about how did I survive these
Speaker 10: tough campaigns or what do you do when you're president?
Speaker 10: And I remember when Hillary ran for the Senate from
Speaker 10: New York, nobody asked her or her opponent, what are
Speaker 10: you going to do when they bring down the World
Speaker 10: Trade Center? So life is always happening to you. So basically,
Speaker 10: you have to think about what you just said. And
Speaker 10: I think it's a good thing you bought a.
Speaker 2: Farm, by the way, But oh, I'm right next to you.
Speaker 2: Trust me.
Speaker 10: But let's just take a politician, say vote for me
Speaker 10: from mayor and I will do one, two three. Okay.
Speaker 10: Then you get in and George Floyd gets killed on
Speaker 10: your streets or you're way up north. But for the
Speaker 10: first time ever, a tornado takes out half your town
Speaker 10: because of climate change, it's moving to Coronados North. Okay.
Speaker 10: So you say, how should I think about this? Well,
Speaker 10: first of all, you have to be heartless not to
Speaker 10: deal with what's happening that you didn't plan for. But
Speaker 10: if you don't also do what you said you would
Speaker 10: do when you ran, the people that were your most
Speaker 10: ardent supporters may feel let them and you may feel
Speaker 10: let them. So life is a constant struggle to do
Speaker 10: what you said you do and what you plan to
Speaker 10: do deal with the incoming fire that you never expected.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you a question real quick before you go.
Speaker 5: We're going to probably be planning this interview back around June,
Speaker 5: which is Black Music Month. I wanted to mention this
Speaker 5: because although President Carter was the first one to invite,
Speaker 5: of course, the Black Music Coalition to come to the
Speaker 5: White House, you, my friend, were the one who signed
Speaker 5: the order and invited Jimmy jam Terry Lewis, Deana Williams,
Speaker 5: the Isley bro This to come to the White House
Speaker 5: and make it official. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 10: Yeah? I remember that. First I wanted to do it,
Speaker 10: and secondly it was another excuse to get people to
Speaker 10: come see me, he thought. I mean, I was a
Speaker 10: huge Brothers friend and I love this whole heart of mine.
Speaker 10: I get it out every now and then just play
Speaker 10: it again. There are all these songs you have, songs
Speaker 10: you replay from your life, don't you. I think, Nina Simons,
Speaker 10: I wish I knew how it would feel to be three.
Speaker 10: It's the best recording of that song, and it's the
Speaker 10: best little known song of the civil rights era. And
Speaker 10: when I get really down, I just put it on
Speaker 10: and play it. But anyway, that's what I wanted to
Speaker 10: say about it. I didn't I want to make the
Speaker 10: point I was trying to make before. How whatever anybody's
Speaker 10: listening to us, you worry about how much money is
Speaker 10: it and what am I going to do? People need
Speaker 10: to worry more about how am I going to do it?
Speaker 10: If you're going to keep score in terms of other
Speaker 10: people's lives, and your impact on it. You have to
Speaker 10: worry as much about how you're going to do it.
Speaker 10: That's what you're gonna do, and how much money you
Speaker 10: have or don't.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, what's the stuff you listen to when you need
Speaker 2: to get up?
Speaker 10: Oh? For once in my life, it's like Stevie Wonders
Speaker 10: in my life.
Speaker 7: One last jazz question from me with regards to the
Speaker 7: saxophone Oliver and Nelson. Are you an Oliver Nelson fan?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 7: So there's an albumin Impulse called a tribute to John
Speaker 7: Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was just wondering if you've ever had
Speaker 7: that one?
Speaker 8: No, check it out that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's class.
Speaker 10: I got a bunch of those albums.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oliver Nelson, Pharaoh Sanders. Were you a fan of
Speaker 2: his as well?
Speaker 10: Oh? Yeah, you know he had Arkansas connections. Yeah, he
Speaker 10: want to talk to his family when he died.
Speaker 1: You're reminding me that I'm doing my first chow in
Speaker 1: Arkansas in four days.
Speaker 2: You are ever, Yeah, but the roots have never.
Speaker 1: Went to you Arkansas. I think we're going a little rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a festival down there, so it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see you.
Speaker 10: You'll like it. They'll be that's a good town.
Speaker 2: I'm going to see it. So this, if you want to.
Speaker 10: Go to my library, let me know. I'll set it
Speaker 10: up right there.
Speaker 2: I might do it, Yes, no doubt, I will absolutely
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 10: And there's an uh we just opened the new Arkansas
Speaker 10: Art Gallery, which is old and it's beautiful really and
Speaker 10: a brilliant woman architect named Jenny Gang from Chicago did it.
Speaker 10: It is a fabulous place.
Speaker 2: I shall be going there.
Speaker 5: How big is that vinyl collection? You didn't tell us?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: How many records you gotten? Where you keep those things?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 10: I keep them in home with my in New York.
Speaker 10: I've got probably I've got over one hundred of these
Speaker 10: in New York. But I also have that many in Arkansas.
Speaker 10: There's an apartment upstairs in the library, and I've got
Speaker 10: them there. Okay, so I still play.
Speaker 1: Them there you go, Well, sir, yeah, this could actually
Speaker 1: go in for twelve hours and we wouldn't care. But
Speaker 1: your people were like, nah, you got to wrap it
Speaker 1: up now, so on behalf of Fontigelo and Laya and
Speaker 1: Sugar Steve and unpaid Bill.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, President Clinton for gracing our show.
Speaker 5: Yes, oh you didn't get to President you didn't get
Speaker 5: to tell about your summer or soul. Dan, We're supposed to.
Speaker 2: Talk about next time. Okay, Part two, Thank you very much.
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