Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bob Leftstitch podcast. I guess today
Speaker 1: is one and only Betty. Looked at Betty, what would
Speaker 1: look like growing up in Detroit of the fifties.
Speaker 2: I didn't necessarily grow up in Detroit. Grew up in
Speaker 2: show business, so it was like when I was young
Speaker 2: in Detroit, I was in show business. My granddaughter right
Speaker 2: now is doing a documentary they're putting together for the
Speaker 2: area that I grew up in Detroit, on the North End.
Speaker 2: It's being declared historical this year. The North End is
Speaker 2: where blacks moved from what was called Black Bottom. Sarah Vaughan,
Speaker 2: Willie John, one of the Temptations, Smokey Robinson lived across
Speaker 2: the alley from man Orrita lived across the street from him.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest black stars of the early forties,
Speaker 2: early fifties and mid fifties, Sugar shild Robinson, lived on
Speaker 2: the next block from me. So it's quite a historical area.
Speaker 2: Jackie Wilson del Reese. So I didn't know those people
Speaker 2: until I started to sing, and the first time that
Speaker 2: I went on stage was the first time I'd ever
Speaker 2: seen the stage.
Speaker 1: Let's go back, So what did your parents do for
Speaker 1: a living.
Speaker 2: Well, everybody's parents worked for General Motors, and so Chrisler's
Speaker 2: I'm a General Motors baby.
Speaker 1: Which company? Did your father work for?
Speaker 2: General Motors? Everybody in my family worked for General Motors,
Speaker 2: And it was almost like a Clannish or Cripson Bloods
Speaker 2: kind of thing. It's like everybody's family worked at the
Speaker 2: place because you could get your relative job if you
Speaker 2: work there. So most of my family worked at all
Speaker 2: of the General Motors companies and the part plants from
Speaker 2: Canada to Muskegon, Michigan, where they made parts, which is
Speaker 2: where my parents came to from Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your parents leaving Louisiana come into Muskegan.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where I was born. And in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 2: certainly if you were black, you could not drop in
Speaker 2: on the bar after work and have a drink. You
Speaker 2: had to come to my house and my parents sol
Speaker 2: corn liquor. We had a jukebox in the living room,
Speaker 2: which is how I learned all of my songs until
Speaker 2: I was three, So my repertoire consisted of the songs
Speaker 2: that were on the jukebox until I was three, and
Speaker 2: I had developed my own.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what songs from the jukebox.
Speaker 2: Well, not all of them, but a song that I
Speaker 2: do on my show even now, a song a woman
Speaker 2: whose name was Annie Laurie, and it was called it
Speaker 2: Hurts to Be in Love. And I could when I
Speaker 2: tell the audience when I do it now. They used
Speaker 2: to stand me on top of the jukebox and I
Speaker 2: would sing the song, and I had on just a
Speaker 2: little T shirt and my diaper, and I would roll
Speaker 2: my stomach all the way down in time with the
Speaker 2: music and all the way back. And I always tell
Speaker 2: them I won't be doing that this evening, but that
Speaker 2: is what I did. But there were I had a
Speaker 2: teenage sister. She was thirteen years old, and when I
Speaker 2: was born, and so all the current popular music was
Speaker 2: on the jukebox, which she liked, which was Little Lester
Speaker 2: and BB King and Chuck Willis and I've Hunter and
Speaker 2: all those people. And then my father liked the gospel
Speaker 2: so and blues, so there was all the blues songs.
Speaker 2: And then my mother liked almost anything that white people sung.
Speaker 2: She liked Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, gin Ow Tree,
Speaker 2: read Foley, and I knew the words to all of
Speaker 2: these people's songs. I didn't know they were different. I
Speaker 2: just thought they were all songs. And of course, not
Speaker 2: being able to go anywhere to drink other than my house.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty six, forty seven, and forty eight, all
Speaker 2: of the five Blind Boys, the Soul Stirs, the Pilgrim
Speaker 2: Travelers all came to my house to eat barbecue sandwiches
Speaker 2: and fried chicken sandwiches and get drunk and sing it.
Speaker 2: They rehearsed there and I heard them. I saw Sam
Speaker 2: Cook the first week he was with the Soul Stirs
Speaker 2: because they had a gig and Muskegon and they came
Speaker 2: to my house see eat and drink.
Speaker 1: How did your parents meet?
Speaker 2: How did they meet?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: My father was working in Plain dealing, Louisiana, which is
Speaker 2: where he's from, and one of the guys he was
Speaker 2: working with knew my sister, my mother, who had five sisters.
Speaker 2: And the women that like these guys who worked on
Speaker 2: the railroad were they would come and bring them lunches
Speaker 2: every day. You know, if you liked one, and if
Speaker 2: you were hitting on one, that's how you introduced yourself.
Speaker 2: You would come and bring in but lunch, and that's
Speaker 2: how they met. I know, my aunt told me that
Speaker 2: when my mother came and got off the train, she
Speaker 2: had been talking about how fretty my mother was, and
Speaker 2: it was so funny. My aunt said, she said, she
Speaker 2: is pretty pretty, and my daddy certainly saw so.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about the corn liquor business.
Speaker 2: Well, that, of course, you know, was prevalent in the South.
Speaker 2: It created the stock car races and everything several other things.
Speaker 2: But all the people who in my family and cousins
Speaker 2: and whatever, who moved to Michigan, they brought the corn
Speaker 2: liquor with them, and they knew each other so they
Speaker 2: could buy it from They didn't have to take a
Speaker 2: chance of trying to go into a liquor store and
Speaker 2: buy something. They all came to my house, so one
Speaker 2: of my cousin's houses in Muskegon, it was. We were
Speaker 2: in the projects that were built for the returning soldiers
Speaker 2: in forty five and forty six. Then they turned them
Speaker 2: into public projects and that's where we lived. And you
Speaker 2: that's almost like living in a huge apartment building, except
Speaker 2: it was all on the same level, so you could
Speaker 2: go right up your back door into somebody else's front door,
Speaker 2: you know, and they all they work together every day
Speaker 2: at the parts plants, and you could run a tab,
Speaker 2: and the half pintes cost fifty cents, and a pine
Speaker 2: cost a dollar, and you could run a tab all
Speaker 2: that week. If you didn't have a family or a wife,
Speaker 2: you could comment. My mother had barbecue and fried chicken
Speaker 2: and fried fish, and so it was. That was the
Speaker 2: environment I actually grew up here.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you a good cook? Can you cook barbecue
Speaker 1: and fried fish?
Speaker 2: Oh? That's what my career has been so up and down.
Speaker 2: You us, I learned to cook. You have to cook
Speaker 2: if you around my mother and the people I grew
Speaker 2: up with, you have to learn that, they say, all
Speaker 2: like women know how to at least fried chicken, fry fish.
Speaker 2: But I learned a lot of the others. And then
Speaker 2: when I started to travel, I started to learn what
Speaker 2: I was having an opportunity to eat. So now we cook.
Speaker 2: I cook everything, and Kevin Nass quite an entertainment with
Speaker 2: eating because I can cook almost anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, it sounds like your father had a big personality
Speaker 1: that everybody gathered at your house. Was that the case?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, my mother had the big personality. Ah, she
Speaker 2: had the food food. My father just wanted another drink.
Speaker 2: But of course they all knew each other. As I said,
Speaker 2: they worked on the line together. They saw each other
Speaker 2: all day every day. And the ones that came from
Speaker 2: Louisiana drunk or sober, went to Mass on Sunday, just
Speaker 2: the way they do a New orleance. I always tell
Speaker 2: the joke that in New Orleans and then mouskeige, and
Speaker 2: you know how when the priest the minister said something
Speaker 2: and then the whole congregation answers in some kind of
Speaker 2: singing response, the whole church smells like alcohol for the
Speaker 2: for the first one and then it melts.
Speaker 1: Okay, growing up, I didn't know anybody who had a
Speaker 1: jukebox in their house. That seemed pretty exotic to me.
Speaker 2: Well, we actually brought it to Detroit with us, well,
Speaker 2: not brought it to Detroit with us. We got in
Speaker 2: line with another jukebox company. So we did for a
Speaker 2: while have a juke box in our house in Detroit,
Speaker 2: but then we became more sophisticated and had a record player.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what was responsible for your family moving from
Speaker 1: a squie into Detroit.
Speaker 2: Well, my father his brother worked at General Motors proper
Speaker 2: as they called it in Pontiac, and he got him
Speaker 2: a job there, and so we moved to Pontiac.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're singing it three years old, you're a star,
Speaker 1: your role of your stomach? What happens when you turned four?
Speaker 2: Robert, I was not. I didn't never come a star
Speaker 2: rolling my stomach. Well, I was a start at projects.
Speaker 2: But we were in Detroit by the time I was four.
Speaker 2: We left Detroit when I was maybe like, I mean,
Speaker 2: left Muskegan when I was like maybe three and a
Speaker 2: half and came to Pontiac, where we lived for about
Speaker 2: a year or so, and then we moved to Detroit.
Speaker 2: And I pretty much was always different from everybody else
Speaker 2: their children. I never had a desire, first of all,
Speaker 2: to be a child, so that made me a pretty
Speaker 2: difficult child and a pretty different child. It wasn't that
Speaker 2: I was bad, as they say children are bad. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to do with grown people and that was
Speaker 2: the way I acted.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what was school like?
Speaker 2: I really was never scholastic. I did not. We just
Speaker 2: believe it or not, had our fifth grade reunion and
Speaker 2: all the people that I was in the fifth grade
Speaker 2: with were there, and it was so funny because I
Speaker 2: was voted most likely not to succeed at at all.
Speaker 2: So for me to walk into the room and have
Speaker 2: everybody say that he Joe asked, because I can't believe
Speaker 2: your Betty loved did you finish high school? No, that
Speaker 2: was really I really just didn't want to do what
Speaker 2: they were doing at all, And then I didn't want
Speaker 2: to meet them every morning. At the same time, I
Speaker 2: wasn't interested in anything that they were saying. If Mother
Speaker 2: and Nessa had known I was gonna love history the
Speaker 2: way I do now, she would have just given me
Speaker 2: the A and said she's gonna get better. But I'm
Speaker 2: or the person now that Mother and Nesta would have
Speaker 2: wanted me to be.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me where you start singing after you
Speaker 1: moved to a Pontiac in Detroit.
Speaker 2: Well, but Pontiac's still just a little girl who didn't
Speaker 2: go anywhere by herself Detroit up until I was like,
Speaker 2: out this place. I'm telling you that my granddaughter is
Speaker 2: doing the research on the North End. When we moved there,
Speaker 2: I guess I was maybe seven, and so it was like,
Speaker 2: did you know that Liverpool A John that's right up
Speaker 2: the street, And did you know that Jackie Wilson. So
Speaker 2: I knew these people's records, but I never saw them.
Speaker 2: I just heard their names and I knew they were there.
Speaker 2: So then we moved farther up the north end, and
Speaker 2: I was in like the fifth grade, and did you
Speaker 2: know Smoky Robinson lived across the alley from even whatever,
Speaker 2: and they were more real to me then. Before that,
Speaker 2: I had never seen people in person who sung, and
Speaker 2: I had never seen a show. When I went on
Speaker 2: the stage in nineteen sixty three with my man, I
Speaker 2: had never seen a microphone, and I had never been
Speaker 2: on a stage. I had never been to a night club,
Speaker 2: had never I was invented out of all cloth right
Speaker 2: there in one weekend.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your singing career from age three, where
Speaker 1: you're singing along with the jukebox to then ultimately getting
Speaker 1: on the stage for the first time. What is going on?
Speaker 2: Nothing but going to school being what they call bad
Speaker 2: and being difficult because all I did was kind of
Speaker 2: listen to music, and I did come. I found the
Speaker 2: homework not difficult to do, so I did it, but
Speaker 2: I didn't go all still. All I had was the jukebox.
Speaker 2: My parents didn't go out to dinner or go to
Speaker 2: hear people sing they came to our house, so they
Speaker 2: were on the jukebox. So I'd never seen anybody walk
Speaker 2: up on the stage or or anything like that until
Speaker 2: that weekend that I started singing. I met. I wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to go, but there was a place called the
Speaker 2: Greystone all Woman Detroit, which is where everyone you've ever
Speaker 2: heard of from Detroit had to go and do performances
Speaker 2: for the DJs to get your recording played. And I
Speaker 2: heard about it on the radio every day. The DJs
Speaker 2: were pushing it, and so I just went and I
Speaker 2: met this girl whose name was Ginger and her full
Speaker 2: name was Sure. Her middle name was Lovette, and she
Speaker 2: knew every number man singer. I loved her. I just
Speaker 2: adore her. My mother hated her, but Ginger kind of
Speaker 2: took me under her wing, and I went to Graystone
Speaker 2: for about two months, and I met Timmy Shaw, who
Speaker 2: introduced me to Johnny May Matthews, who recorded My Man
Speaker 2: on Me. And I swear to you all of this
Speaker 2: happened in a month.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going back, were you singing in school? Were
Speaker 1: you singing at church? Were you singing in the living room?
Speaker 1: Before this?
Speaker 2: Everywhere that I ever sung in school. They let me sing.
Speaker 2: They let me in the talent show once, but I
Speaker 2: sung I'm a Hog for you baby, and Mother Nesta
Speaker 2: put me out of the talent show. They put me
Speaker 2: in the Christmas show once, and then I said the
Speaker 2: wrong thing to marry because I wanted to play Mary.
Speaker 2: And then they put me in the choir and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't stop hanging with the boys in their area. So
Speaker 2: I got put out of all the singing things that
Speaker 2: I ever did in school. But now I'm a Hog
Speaker 2: for you baby was good.
Speaker 1: You go to the ballroom. How do you ultimately decide
Speaker 1: to take the stage.
Speaker 2: I wanted to sing, but as I told you, I
Speaker 2: never knew people who could sing. I just knew the
Speaker 2: ones in the jukebox and then the ones that saw
Speaker 2: on television. So then hearing about these people on the radio,
Speaker 2: they were advertising them being at this place every weekend.
Speaker 2: And so when I went and Ginger introduced me to
Speaker 2: Timmy Shaw, well, first I met I was in the hospital, actually,
Speaker 2: and I met a singer who came to see the
Speaker 2: girl in the bed next to me. But she went
Speaker 2: to have some X rays and he came to see
Speaker 2: her and she wasn't there. So I talked to him
Speaker 2: because it was eleven o'clock in the morning, and he
Speaker 2: on a black mohair suit, sleep my care and some
Speaker 2: pat leather shoes, and I was instantly in love. And
Speaker 2: it was Willie Jones, who sung with the Royal Jokers,
Speaker 2: and I'm like a real entertainer that I right here.
Speaker 2: So he and I. I was sixteen, he was twenty four,
Speaker 2: twenty five, but I was really I'm still precocious. I
Speaker 2: don't think you're gonna apply that to an adult at
Speaker 2: this point. But I met him and he wrote a
Speaker 2: song for me. He was singing, and I said I
Speaker 2: can sing, and he said that heres. So I started
Speaker 2: to sing along with him one night when we were out.
Speaker 2: And the reason I was able to go out with
Speaker 2: him was because I had had a child, and usually
Speaker 2: in the at point, if you had a child, you
Speaker 2: were considered glowing. So I was able to go out
Speaker 2: then after nine or ten o'clock or whatever. And when
Speaker 2: I met him, he took me to see the Old
Speaker 2: Jokers perform, and I knew someone then who was actually
Speaker 2: on the stage singing, and he wrote this song for me,
Speaker 2: and then he disappeared. I didn't know that he was
Speaker 2: later white disappeared. But anyway, when I met Timmy and
Speaker 2: he took me to meet Johnny May, I said, well,
Speaker 2: I have a song. I said, A man wrote it
Speaker 2: for me. His name is Willie Jones. She said Willie
Speaker 2: Jones were old jokers. I said, yes, that's him, and
Speaker 2: she said, let me hear it. So I sung the
Speaker 2: something and the song was about a teenage girl. It
Speaker 2: was called shut your mouth and don't talk back, and
Speaker 2: it was about a teenage girl who had stayed out
Speaker 2: later and she was supposed to and her mama met
Speaker 2: her at the door in the whole bit, and she said,
Speaker 2: it's a great song. And I sung it and and
Speaker 2: she introduced me to my Man, which I sung and recorded,
Speaker 2: and that was supposed to be the B side. But
Speaker 2: when the DJ's her recording, which came out that week
Speaker 2: after I recorded it, because they were playing demos and
Speaker 2: you could get you could tell from how many the
Speaker 2: response you got from the demos, how many initial records
Speaker 2: you should have pressed up. People didn't just send it
Speaker 2: to get thousands of records pressed so so the records
Speaker 2: seemed to indicate. The response seemed to indicate that my
Speaker 2: Man was what they wanted to play it, and what
Speaker 2: they did play and put went into the national R
Speaker 2: and B charts and cash box and billboard. All of
Speaker 2: this happened, this started, in all this, This was only
Speaker 2: like the end of September.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back, You'd never been on stage before, you'd
Speaker 1: never been in front of a microphone. You go to
Speaker 1: the ballroom a few times. How do you end up
Speaker 1: on stage.
Speaker 2: When the record came out?
Speaker 1: No? Wait, wait, weren't you on stage before the record
Speaker 1: came out?
Speaker 2: Nope? I just knew that people then who are on
Speaker 2: the stage. And when I recorded, gosh, you have the
Speaker 2: recording studio, I was sixteen and the guitar player who's
Speaker 2: playing the lead lick in my man, Leroy Manuel, was fifteen,
Speaker 2: and they had stuck him out of his bedroom to
Speaker 2: do the recording session. He's a really big person in
Speaker 2: Canada now, and I just I'm so proud of him.
Speaker 2: But he and I were just kids there. But the
Speaker 2: people who were on the recording were grown recording artists
Speaker 2: make grown musicians and whatever. And Johnny May was singing
Speaker 2: in my ear and telling me how to sing the song.
Speaker 2: And then they pressed up some them o's so that
Speaker 2: next weekend, I had to go and do a record hop.
Speaker 2: But we had at that time a new place which
Speaker 2: was having you sing your songs with the band live,
Speaker 2: and I had only done that the week before one
Speaker 2: time when I recorded, so they called my name. I
Speaker 2: went up on the stage and it said out it off,
Speaker 2: and I said.
Speaker 1: And then okay.
Speaker 2: But wait a minute. Marvin Kate had at stubborn kind
Speaker 2: of fell out, thick or chick, whatever it was, came
Speaker 2: out the same day. He's sitting there stage, just kind
Speaker 2: of a step up, and so he's sitting next to
Speaker 2: it and he counts off, and I didn't know how
Speaker 2: to make the man start playing.
Speaker 1: So okay. Do you think from a young age you
Speaker 1: were desperate to be a famous singer? Did you have
Speaker 1: that desire or just have the desire to get out
Speaker 1: of the house or be famous or make money? What
Speaker 1: was in your mind?
Speaker 2: I didn't know that I could be a famous singer.
Speaker 2: I didn't know any famous singers. It was only after
Speaker 2: we got to each White and I knew about Smoking
Speaker 2: Poppinson and these other people. I didn't know. I just
Speaker 2: anybody could do it. I thought these people were special
Speaker 2: people somehow that I didn't know anyone who and I
Speaker 2: never nobody in my family knew anyone who sung, so I,
Speaker 2: you know, than the gospel people, and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to sing in church, and so no, I. After I
Speaker 2: knew them, then all of my thoughts this started if
Speaker 2: like maybe the sixth grade. Then all of my thoughts
Speaker 2: were strictly I want to be a singer, and then
Speaker 2: after a while, I want to be a star. But
Speaker 2: you're Smoky Robinson lived across the alley from me. He
Speaker 2: wasn't a star, so he was just a finger. But
Speaker 2: I liked the way they were doing it. I like
Speaker 2: the way they lived, and I loved shiny suits and
Speaker 2: the shiny hair and the shiny ear rings, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to sing. So then after I got into it,
Speaker 2: the next two weeks, I wanted to be a star.
Speaker 2: And then oh god, after that, I wanted to be rich.
Speaker 2: So it came in increments.
Speaker 1: Okay, the record is ultimately distributed by Atlantic Records. Did
Speaker 1: you have any contact with anybody Atlantic Records?
Speaker 2: Yes, Robert West and Johnny Mae Matthews, because Johnny Maye
Speaker 2: Matthews was one of the only producers in Detroit at
Speaker 2: the time who had Big Contacts, which was at Atlantic.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how that happened. Well, it was
Speaker 2: because of the Falcons. He had the Falcons and they
Speaker 2: had just had a big record, and Robert West knew
Speaker 2: Jerry Wexler and I'm ed Hurdigain, and so when Atlantic
Speaker 2: bought my man, I had the opportunity to talk with
Speaker 2: them on the phone. And Jerry Wexler and I remained
Speaker 2: friends for most of my early career. I used to
Speaker 2: call him on the phone at home in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night and say, mister Weckster, would you send
Speaker 2: me fifty dollars, which was a big deal. Hey, she
Speaker 2: can pick up the phone and call New York and
Speaker 2: give fifty dollars at Western Union and a snap. So
Speaker 2: I had I had the attitude that I've maintained since then.
Speaker 1: Okay, your record is successful and you go on the road.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: It was. Remember now this is this is weeks old.
Speaker 2: So I'm theoretically still my friend Ginger, who is a groofie.
Speaker 2: Every time Clyde makes Fatter opened his dressing room door,
Speaker 2: I was standing there. Every time any can over this
Speaker 2: dressing room door, I was standing here. Barbara Lynne was
Speaker 2: with her, so she had to act nice.
Speaker 1: But I was grown.
Speaker 2: I was just about seventeen, and I had a record.
Speaker 2: I knew all these stars, and I was just doing
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do. But that was the most
Speaker 2: exciting thing. The very first tour I ever went on
Speaker 2: was well, the very first one was kind of a
Speaker 2: regional because Robert West was partners with Herman Griffin, who
Speaker 2: was Mary Wells's husband at the time, and Robert West
Speaker 2: was my manager, so he put a little tour together
Speaker 2: and on that little tour was Mary Wells mac Rice
Speaker 2: who had just left the Falcons and wrote Mustang Sally
Speaker 2: and that's what he was singing and me and I
Speaker 2: think that was it. I think that was it on
Speaker 2: but we didn't go We just went like maybe three
Speaker 2: or four places. Then I came back a full fledged
Speaker 2: star of course by this time that month and the
Speaker 2: Victual with Clide Macpatter and Benny King, Clarence frog Manning,
Speaker 2: Henry Barbara Lynne. The band was.
Speaker 3: The the Royal Jokers, not the Royal Jokers, the Five
Speaker 3: Royals band who was the leader of the fire Rolls.
Speaker 2: It was their ban anyway, El Pauling, it was the
Speaker 2: El Pauling band. So like Robert, I gotta tell you
Speaker 2: twenty years later, when I was madly in love with
Speaker 2: Clarence Paul, I told him. I said, on my first tour,
Speaker 2: I was on the opens band called an orchestra called
Speaker 2: Oh Paul, and he said, that's my brother.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, how many days? How long does
Speaker 1: this tour last? This big doer, and how far from
Speaker 1: Detroit do you go?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh. We went from the trua audience that was
Speaker 2: the Chitland Circuit. We did the entire Chipland circuit. Everything
Speaker 2: that the children Circuit consisted of then is where we
Speaker 2: went north and south Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee cities in those
Speaker 2: places as well, maybe three cities in some places Alabama.
Speaker 2: As you got west, the Chidland Circuit didn't go that
Speaker 2: like when you started Arkansas. You were going west, and
Speaker 2: it went that way for some people. Now when we
Speaker 2: came back north looped around to come back and end
Speaker 2: in Ohio, People like clib mcfatter, Benny King, Clarence frog Man,
Speaker 2: Henry went on north to do places that at that
Speaker 2: point weren't doing rhythm and blues. You know, it had
Speaker 2: to have crossed over like the Drifters and Climac Flatter did,
Speaker 2: and like uh frog man Henry had done. Barbara Lynn
Speaker 2: and I turned around and came home. The rest of
Speaker 2: them went north.
Speaker 1: Okay, what kind of venues were you playing on this tour?
Speaker 2: Mostly halls? We went to north in South Carolina. They
Speaker 2: were having the first dancers with their rope in between
Speaker 2: the audience. And I always tell people, now, that's one
Speaker 2: of the ways that I learned to cover the whole stage.
Speaker 2: Because the promoter was saying, please don't look at one
Speaker 2: one up on one side of the rope more than others.
Speaker 2: Please try to go back and forth. And they were pleading,
Speaker 2: please don't stay on one side of the rope. So
Speaker 2: I had to keep going back and forth across the stage.
Speaker 2: And so no, I just do that naturally, which is
Speaker 2: a good thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're traveling, what kind of bus? What kind of
Speaker 1: rooms are you staying in?
Speaker 2: Oh, we were saying in only black places along the highway.
Speaker 2: We were peeing along the highway a lot, and going
Speaker 2: to places that they may have. If they had a
Speaker 2: restroom inside, we couldn't use them. But if they were
Speaker 2: nice and kind people, they had an outdoor restroom we
Speaker 2: could use. It was quite everything that you've heard and read.
Speaker 2: I know when we went to Mississippi, my mother was
Speaker 2: who was from Louisiana, was just terrified. She said, you
Speaker 2: keep your big mouth closed and don't be looking those
Speaker 2: white books in their face. I mean, she was very
Speaker 2: serious because she knew I would talk to anyone, and
Speaker 2: she felt that I may step out of my place.
Speaker 2: And she was so nervous so whole while we were there.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know you hear about going on the road.
Speaker 1: You're seventeen years old. They're drugs, alcohol, sex, as grown
Speaker 1: up as you are at the time. Do you grow
Speaker 1: up a lot more?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. I always tell people there are no children
Speaker 2: in show business. I don't care how cute they are.
Speaker 2: I don't care if their parents up with them. I
Speaker 2: don't care if they're Osmas and their moorings. There are
Speaker 2: no children in show business. And it's probably even worse today.
Speaker 2: But no, that's no, there are no children in show business.
Speaker 1: So you come off the road. Clyde McPhatter continues, But
Speaker 1: you're now back in Detroit. What happens then?
Speaker 2: Nothing? So all my friends told me you should go
Speaker 2: to New York and tell those people you want your
Speaker 2: contract back because they should make another record for you.
Speaker 2: So I went to New York and I erst in
Speaker 2: the Cherry Wexell's office. I said, I want to release
Speaker 2: from my contract. And he said, well why because I
Speaker 2: told you I've been talking to this man on the
Speaker 2: phone at his home in the bedroom and and I said,
Speaker 2: my friends told me that you should have put another
Speaker 2: record out on it by now, like I know. He said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we intended to do another record. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I need a record now. It's been so many months
Speaker 2: and I didn't even know how many. It's the most
Speaker 2: stupid thing Robert I ever did in my entire career.
Speaker 2: He said that we have we're working with this young
Speaker 2: and who was working with a new singer, Dion Warwick Kenny.
Speaker 2: He's working at what was the name of the record label, Scepter.
Speaker 2: He said, he's working with Scepter. And he said, but
Speaker 2: we're working with him too, and his name is were Back,
Speaker 2: and uh, we're gonna have to we're gonna talk to
Speaker 2: him about you. I ain't never heard of him. I
Speaker 2: don't care. My friend said, I have to get a
Speaker 2: release from this contract. So Jerry said here's one dude,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna write to this check of my own personal
Speaker 2: check for five hundred dollars. I'm gonna give you a
Speaker 2: big ug. You go on and do it, do what
Speaker 2: you think should be done. The most stupid mistake I
Speaker 2: have ever made in my entire life. You know what?
Speaker 2: That left road open for No who was the next biggarist?
Speaker 2: He surprank. But I'm there with the president in love
Speaker 2: with me. I mean not that kind of love, but
Speaker 2: in love with me because she just thought I was
Speaker 2: so cute and that I sung like a grown woman.
Speaker 2: And so No, I got this shit all under my belt.
Speaker 2: Now my friends and I know lots of people in
Speaker 2: show business. Now, now you have to think the reason
Speaker 2: they were available for me to talk to was because
Speaker 2: they weren't doing shit. So they were telling me what
Speaker 2: to do, and I left them. I have no idea
Speaker 2: where I was going or I really just at that point, Robert,
Speaker 2: I thought that I thought that it was they would say,
Speaker 2: oh my goodness, she's cute and she had this record,
Speaker 2: let's make another record with her. And I thought all
Speaker 2: the record companies with me saying that, and then I
Speaker 2: didn't call, So.
Speaker 1: So what happened next, uh something.
Speaker 2: That's when I say now in interviews, I'm grateful, but
Speaker 2: I'm still pissed. But I'm really grateful because I've never
Speaker 2: spent a dime in this business. Not of course, someone
Speaker 2: has always called and asked to record me. So after that,
Speaker 2: my the accountant at Shaw artist who was the booking
Speaker 2: agent for all black artists, then left. They unless they
Speaker 2: got big enough to be that King Cole or that
Speaker 2: was the barrier that you tried to cross at that
Speaker 2: point to give where that King Cole was? If that
Speaker 2: not that you were with Shaw Artists Corporation and they
Speaker 2: booked everybody, and they booked me. They worked all of
Speaker 2: the Atlantic artists and the accountant because I was always
Speaker 2: calling to borrow money, so he and I became very
Speaker 2: close and he started to manage me. Then I introduced
Speaker 2: him to the Falcons, who Robert Weston died and left
Speaker 2: them as well, and so he started to manage me
Speaker 2: and the Falcons, and I that because I stayed in
Speaker 2: New York after I did come without being asked, are
Speaker 2: we're still young people? Now? First, don't get in show
Speaker 2: business first, but then if you do, don't go to
Speaker 2: New York or LA unless they send for you. So
Speaker 2: I've been kicked out of both New York and LA
Speaker 2: but New York five times, but I you know, somebody
Speaker 2: called Cali call that did it's uneasy and each one
Speaker 2: of the times it's was my friends, the manager from
Speaker 2: the accountant from Shaw. Then he made a woman out
Speaker 2: of me. Leland Archers, Kenny Rogers brother. I went back
Speaker 2: to Detroit and recorded for Condition My Condition is In
Speaker 2: for Ali McLaughlin and his record label, which took me
Speaker 2: back to Atlantic briefly. And after that Leland Archers I
Speaker 2: did the show what Condition my Condition is In? And
Speaker 2: Leland Rogers heard it. I'd not heard it. I took
Speaker 2: it to him when he came to Detroite and he
Speaker 2: loved it. And they couldn't poor that they didn't have
Speaker 2: WoT the pitts in at the time. And he loved
Speaker 2: it though, and he said, my brother is starting a
Speaker 2: new record label in Nashville, and he said, I think
Speaker 2: he was, So he sent it to him and Leland
Speaker 2: called me. He said, I know you don't remember me,
Speaker 2: but I was your national promotion man for left me
Speaker 2: down easy. So my career has been just like that
Speaker 2: all the way up till now. It's been just like
Speaker 2: that I met you when this. Now I own this.
Speaker 2: I want to do this for you. I remember when
Speaker 2: we It's everything. It's never been a normal, straight ahead
Speaker 2: kind of flop over hit.
Speaker 1: Okay, what was your state of mind during all this?
Speaker 1: Did you think things were going to work out? Or
Speaker 1: would you think you know that the phone was gonna ring?
Speaker 1: Or do you think it was over?
Speaker 2: Well, every time it ended, I thought it was over.
Speaker 2: But here, get up, I said. The phone always rang,
Speaker 2: somebody always called, and it's still kind of that way,
Speaker 2: except that I'm kind of sick of that now. I'm
Speaker 2: sick of it dying and then me wondering if somebody
Speaker 2: is going to call or what's going to happen. And
Speaker 2: everybody is called. Every time the phone is wronging, it's
Speaker 2: been somebody is something with before and that makes me
Speaker 2: feel good, though to note that anybody it's just like
Speaker 2: when I left it not I can still call Jerry
Speaker 2: Wexler and say send me fifty dollars. I can still
Speaker 2: call any producer I've ever had that is still living
Speaker 2: on the phone today and say send me fifty dollars. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm glad. I don't have to. But I've just never
Speaker 2: been a great record seller. If everyone that has hurt me,
Speaker 2: that likes me can see me, and that hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: Anytime I've been seen, it's been fine. But I don't
Speaker 2: know right now. When you say I think it's over,
Speaker 2: it's always over, because that's the way it seems to me.
Speaker 2: But so I don't know what's gonna happen now. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I want. I'm pissed at this point because
Speaker 2: I shouldn't don't know what's going to happen at a
Speaker 2: even even only paid twenty dollars, I shouldn't know what's
Speaker 2: gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Well, but you have a band and you play live dates.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, but it at this point, Robert, I had
Speaker 2: thought that I would I call it a Ray Charles
Speaker 2: my career. I have no desire to be Beyonce, but
Speaker 2: I have a raging desire to be Ray Charles. I
Speaker 2: met that lifestyle. I want to go fill an auditorium
Speaker 2: and sing for two hours, them pay a large speed,
Speaker 2: and then I do another one next week, all over
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, what's the most important part here? The work
Speaker 1: or getting paid or being known. When you say Ray Charles' career,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I had always thought that I would die broke and unknown,
Speaker 2: and now I know I'm just gonna die broke.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you go on the road with your band,
Speaker 1: that's not profitable.
Speaker 2: Not really. I hire the best musicians available. Now, when
Speaker 2: I was able to have a band, I've been fortunate
Speaker 2: enough in this fifth career I call it, which has
Speaker 2: been going on for the last twenty years, and I
Speaker 2: am extremely grateful for it. Well, twenty five years now,
Speaker 2: I was able to have the same band that I
Speaker 2: went into this fifth career from Detroit, and they were
Speaker 2: with me for twenty years. But naturally, going all over
Speaker 2: the world with me, everybody was looking at them. So
Speaker 2: one went to this star, one went to that star.
Speaker 2: And because we weren't a band, maybe they would have
Speaker 2: felt compelled to be if we were a band. But
Speaker 2: I'm not in a band. I have a man, and
Speaker 2: in that I am unanimous. So that always causes a problem.
Speaker 2: And I certainly can't anybody who's been in my band
Speaker 2: who is left to go to be with someone bigger.
Speaker 2: I can't say anything because I'm they're not. I'm not
Speaker 2: in a band with them. They're my band, and that's
Speaker 2: the way I wanted. That's the way Gambulist told me
Speaker 2: to always keep it, and that's the way I've kept it.
Speaker 2: So I probable I'm going to do some things now,
Speaker 2: just some duos. Those will be profitable because they will
Speaker 2: to be just and my new company at the end.
Speaker 2: Stat Wick and he is very, very good and we're
Speaker 2: kind of kind in spirits. Although he's younger than me,
Speaker 2: although everybody is. But uh that I'm looking forward to you.
Speaker 2: When I do the duet things, I sit and do
Speaker 2: pretty much what you and I are doing now. I
Speaker 2: tell stories about my career about other people that I know.
Speaker 2: I lie on me and everybody and whatever. It's more
Speaker 2: telling you, But it sounds like that. It's because so
Speaker 2: much of it is so amazing.
Speaker 1: You talk about your fifth career. During that time, the
Speaker 1: business has changed dramatically.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Atlantic you know was an independent company then owned by
Speaker 1: Warner et cetera. So today although there are three major labels,
Speaker 1: everybody's in their own business. You know, you could talk
Speaker 1: you can talk beyond Sy you can talk Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of people who don't know the music,
Speaker 1: they might know the name, whereas when you were coming up,
Speaker 1: when I was coming up, if if it was a
Speaker 1: hit on the radio, literally everybody knew yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So the game has changed a little bit. So you
Speaker 1: had this incredible recognition at the Kennedy Center Honors. First,
Speaker 1: how did that come to be?
Speaker 2: But you know Kevin right, well, you know Kevin better.
Speaker 1: Than you do me, right, that's your For those who
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: He knows everything everyone who has ever stepped up to
Speaker 2: a microphone. And it really annoys me because he knows
Speaker 2: more black people than I do. But anyway, he called
Speaker 2: the Kennedy Center Honors and he said, my wife is
Speaker 2: Petty Covett. They were honoring George Jones, and he said
Speaker 2: she's as a new recording choices by George soon and
Speaker 2: he sent it to them and they loved it. And
Speaker 2: Michael Stevens, who is the producers that Ken honors, who
Speaker 2: was the son of the movie producer George Stevens, he
Speaker 2: loved it. He said, so many people are coming from
Speaker 2: Nashville to honor George Jones. He said, we just don't
Speaker 2: have anything else. Another song. They said, well, we do
Speaker 2: have songs. One song by the Hoop and I said
Speaker 2: the what of course my husband knew it and he
Speaker 2: played it for me and I said, yeah, but I
Speaker 2: learned the song and I met the music director Rob Mathis,
Speaker 2: talked to him on the phone, told him and I
Speaker 2: wanted to do well. Got a key really is mostly
Speaker 2: what we did. So when we got there for the
Speaker 2: sound check or the rehearsal sound check, I called he
Speaker 2: and Michael's side and I said, I can sing the song,
Speaker 2: but I can't sing it like that and they said,
Speaker 2: like what I said, like it goes. So he said, well,
Speaker 2: can you sing it to me Rob Matthitts, the music director,
Speaker 2: I said, I can sing it to you fuck a
Speaker 2: ball and you can just kind of pick up when
Speaker 2: following because I knew how I wanted to sing it.
Speaker 2: And I sung it to him and he told the
Speaker 2: man he said, we're going to take an our break
Speaker 2: and come back, and he went and sat down and
Speaker 2: bote that arrangement for me in that hour and it
Speaker 2: just went flawlessly. I was nervouses, I don't know what,
Speaker 2: but it just went flawlessly. And when I walked out
Speaker 2: into the stage, Robert it was looking at the stage
Speaker 2: put the stage put to your audience in your mind.
Speaker 2: When I looked out fourth row, Aretha Franklin was sitting
Speaker 2: about halfway the audience. Over from her, like Beyonce. Up
Speaker 2: in the balcony was The Who and Pete Townshend, and
Speaker 2: next to them was Barbara Streisson. So see see where
Speaker 2: you can see this, because it really happened like this.
Speaker 2: I walked out there, I started singing, and after I
Speaker 2: got settled into the song, Aretha's mouth said I thought
Speaker 2: she was here. Then it was Beyonce Who.
Speaker 1: Wait, you're mouthing the words from I know, but but
Speaker 1: but you can say for my audience, what example I'm.
Speaker 2: Telling you after because I want you to see what
Speaker 2: I was saying. Okay, So I'm looking at them. I
Speaker 2: couldn't hear them either, but okay. Then I look up
Speaker 2: in the balcony and Barbara Streisen is looking at She
Speaker 2: pulls Pete Townsend over. She says, did you write that?
Speaker 2: And he was looking at her, perplexed with tears in
Speaker 2: his eyes. And I call it my three Stooges slap.
Speaker 1: It was just a.
Speaker 2: I've never felt so good in my entire career. And
Speaker 2: it went fabulously well and of course, Michael Stevens, the
Speaker 2: music director, became a producer and did that out here. Again,
Speaker 2: I didn't go to the studio. I didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: He produced an album on me. The interpretations out that
Speaker 2: one caused something else to happen. But I've not.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait a little bit slower. Okay, you have
Speaker 1: your experience on stage the Kenny Center Kenny Center Honors.
Speaker 1: Certainly prior to the final version we had last year
Speaker 1: was during Christmas. The ratings were unbelievable. Everybody saw you
Speaker 1: and you were the star of the show. Everybody knew
Speaker 1: so other than the moment and then making another label,
Speaker 1: did it change your life in any way where people
Speaker 1: coming out of we want an interview, We want to
Speaker 1: do this. When you walk down the street, did someone recognize?
Speaker 1: Did it change your life?
Speaker 2: That is why this is my fifth career, because every
Speaker 2: time it happened, it changed my life. In other words,
Speaker 2: the sugar always turned to shit, and I've seen more
Speaker 2: of that than most people have. I even think that
Speaker 2: things that's happened so instantaneously. Now, if this fifth career
Speaker 2: had happened right now, it may have had more stick
Speaker 2: to itiveness. But every when my man came out. It
Speaker 2: was in the charts on a major record label. I've
Speaker 2: been singing one month when let Me Down Easy it
Speaker 2: came out. I was on the labels that was owned
Speaker 2: by the mafia. I could do anything I asked for.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be on Shindig and was. I went
Speaker 2: everywhere I showed with James Brown. Then the next time,
Speaker 2: every time it happened, it was the biggest life changing
Speaker 2: thing that had happened to me. Yes, it changed my life.
Speaker 2: When the thing you're talking about after that, it called
Speaker 2: something else to happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, just do a little fill in for a second.
Speaker 1: How did you end up on Broadway?
Speaker 2: My manager Jim Lewis, who told me early on during
Speaker 2: that period between coming back from New York and having
Speaker 2: a lot of local regional records that I did not
Speaker 2: pay for, but he had me learning songs like God
Speaker 2: Bless the Child and Sweet Georgia Brown and it Don't
Speaker 2: Be a Thing. And my band and I, who is sixteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen and eighteen and I was twenty three, we were
Speaker 2: like because we were rehearsing sin Family Stone and whatever
Speaker 2: it was hot at the time. So he made us
Speaker 2: learn these songs. Though and made us work with the
Speaker 2: biggest or the stud air at the time, Jimmy Wilkins
Speaker 2: and he was the biggest man at the Detroit Musicians
Speaker 2: Union Local five, and Jim Lewis. So we were thrown
Speaker 2: into this sing We did all the big gigs. We
Speaker 2: sung at the mirrors and arc roll ball, we did everything.
Speaker 2: So when they called me, Vivian Meade was being replaced.
Speaker 2: The problem was Vivian Red created and won the Tony
Speaker 2: for the lead role in Bubbling Brown Sugar. They called
Speaker 2: me in they knew who I was. Debbie Allen, husband
Speaker 2: had been our bass player when I came to New
Speaker 2: York the first time fifteen years before that, and told
Speaker 2: her to tell them to call me. So if the
Speaker 2: irony of my career it has just been like I
Speaker 2: was saying with Leland Rogers being Kenny Roger's brother, and
Speaker 2: that same thing happened again. So Debbie had them called
Speaker 2: me because Debbie could dance the role, but she couldn't
Speaker 2: sing it, and I couldn't dance. I could sing it,
Speaker 2: and that was most important part. So when the producer
Speaker 2: called me, he said can you dance? I said, of
Speaker 2: course I can dance. Some black and he said, well,
Speaker 2: whatever he's say, can you tap dance? I said no.
Speaker 2: He said, well look at it this way, you learn
Speaker 2: the other dances. It's just another dance you're learning if
Speaker 2: you can dance. So I went to the audition Jim Lewis,
Speaker 2: who had taught me all these songs and had every
Speaker 2: faith in me. He wasn't even thinking about dancer. He
Speaker 2: was thinking, get her an understory and let her dance.
Speaker 2: He was so thrilled that I was going to be
Speaker 2: singing these songs that came out of the era. He
Speaker 2: came from the Duke Kellington Jimmy Lunsword era, and he
Speaker 2: had taught me all these songs. I never had a
Speaker 2: call for these songs, which is why I didn't want
Speaker 2: to learn them. But I had learned them. I went
Speaker 2: up on this stage and a sun God child, I
Speaker 2: had sung Speech Brown. They hired me that day. I
Speaker 2: had to go to rehearsal the next morning. It took
Speaker 2: three weeks for my clothes to catch up with me
Speaker 2: because I went on tour that week. When they left
Speaker 2: New York and Honey Coles was telling that directory, he said,
Speaker 2: she's not a dancer, she's a singer. He said, don't
Speaker 2: count to her, sing to her say ba a bute
Speaker 2: bute bout as opposed to one and two and one
Speaker 2: and two. And I didn't know one and two and
Speaker 2: three went so honey, Coloes put his arm around me
Speaker 2: and sung it to me and talked to me those
Speaker 2: few steps that I had to do to get on
Speaker 2: the stage at the end of that week, the first
Speaker 2: time I had ever been in a show or on
Speaker 2: a Broadway stage of my life. I did that. And
Speaker 2: the next morning I got up and went to rehearsal,
Speaker 2: and he taught me, and I did that all day,
Speaker 2: and I did that that night. Then the next morning
Speaker 2: I got off. And when I learned how to do
Speaker 2: the book and win, every day I went to rehearsal.
Speaker 2: My feet. I had never used all the muscles in
Speaker 2: my feet like that. I danced all night. You know
Speaker 2: how to dance, but I had never done that. Most
Speaker 2: professional dancing is down on you. The balls of your feet,
Speaker 2: the balls of my feet, if you touched them with
Speaker 2: your finger, I would screamed. They were so sore. And
Speaker 2: I got through that week. Then I got through the
Speaker 2: next week, and the songs I was stopped in the show.
Speaker 2: You know songs, So that was keeping the producer police
Speaker 2: and they just had to teach me to dance, and
Speaker 2: that to two weeks, and that's how I wound up
Speaker 2: in the show.
Speaker 1: You're right, but you stayed with the show a long time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because each show the closest like that was getting
Speaker 2: ready to be the Broadway show, which was gonna stay there.
Speaker 2: After the original stars left and went to Europe on
Speaker 2: a Europe show, they made a road show as well.
Speaker 2: The ones that didn't go to Europe, Honey Coals and
Speaker 2: the people that were left with me, we went on
Speaker 2: the road here in America, so we did that for
Speaker 2: I guess. I did that for a year. Then they
Speaker 2: had a bus and truck show. I did that for
Speaker 2: six months. Then they had some old show and I
Speaker 2: did that. So I did wrote three to times in
Speaker 2: three different capacities. They get less and less, you know,
Speaker 2: like when you get down the bus and truck, which
Speaker 2: is what I did with Cab Caliway. It had gotten
Speaker 2: down to where we were all traveling by bus and
Speaker 2: all the equipment was being carried and costumes are being
Speaker 2: carried by truck. And of course had learned more then
Speaker 2: with Mabel Lee and with Cab, Caliway and Cab. When
Speaker 2: I was doing this show, he disliked all the young
Speaker 2: people on the show at first. He got like some
Speaker 2: of them a little bitter. But he liked me because
Speaker 2: of the ethic that Jim Lewis had given me. I
Speaker 2: want make up. Every day when we went to the
Speaker 2: airport to where I was dressed, and he always had
Speaker 2: on an ascot or a tie or whatever. And he said,
Speaker 2: that's the way it starts. It's supposed to look when
Speaker 2: they when they travel, these chicks and these house shoes,
Speaker 2: these rollers in theirs. He would be so mad, but
Speaker 2: he let me ride with him when we were on
Speaker 2: the road in his Lincoln Cottmental and I rode with him,
Speaker 2: and then I told my husband, I said, I think
Speaker 2: secretly the reason he let me ride with him is
Speaker 2: because I would jump out of the car at the
Speaker 2: ATM machines and go and put not ATM machines the
Speaker 2: off track, betting the off track, betting the otb otbs.
Speaker 2: I would run and put his bets in for him,
Speaker 2: because we bet the whole while we were in New England.
Speaker 2: They have in New England they have otv's, So I
Speaker 2: would jump out of the car and go and put
Speaker 2: his betsend for him. I said that was why he
Speaker 2: had me ride with him. He'd have somebody cute who
Speaker 2: could run and do all things he wanted done. But
Speaker 2: I learned so much just in conversation. And since that's
Speaker 2: the show business. I got in show business to be
Speaker 2: in the one I had seen in movies and on television.
Speaker 1: He was it.
Speaker 2: And he just told me so many stories and I
Speaker 2: love them.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you were in the road show, since you
Speaker 1: brought up finances, did you make good money working in
Speaker 1: the show?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, more money than I had ever made before
Speaker 2: because nothing had lasted that consistently before. But I've never
Speaker 2: made consider just the way this is like. If I
Speaker 2: understand the envy the way it's described, it's wishing that
Speaker 2: the other person didn't have it and you did. And
Speaker 2: I don't feel that way because I'm so glad for
Speaker 2: all of certainly all the people I grew up with.
Speaker 2: But look at who I grew up with. They're all millionaires,
Speaker 2: and I have done the same thing that they don't
Speaker 2: gone the same thing, but things have just fallen differently
Speaker 2: for them than they have for me, And I think
Speaker 2: that is what I mean when I say I'm absolutely
Speaker 2: thrill and grateful because I had done things that no
Speaker 2: one else in my family would ever dreamed of doing.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: Pissed because I haven't got as much money as.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're living on the north side of Detroit. You
Speaker 1: mentioned all these household names irrelevant of finances. Are those
Speaker 1: people your friends at this point? Do you know that
Speaker 1: it's the ones who are still alive? Are they you say, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're in show business, they used to live in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I've crossed paths with them once or twice. Or are
Speaker 1: these people you're friends?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, all of them were. You have to remember
Speaker 2: we have a joke that white people think that all
Speaker 2: black people know each other. In nineteen sixty two, they
Speaker 2: did because they all went to the same church, the
Speaker 2: same supermarket. I know all these people personally. The ones
Speaker 2: who aren't dead or who have not gone to God,
Speaker 2: I'm friends with. I was friends with the Tops Attempts,
Speaker 2: oh until they died. Of so many of them. If
Speaker 2: they aren't dead or having gone to God, I'm still
Speaker 2: friends with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this Broadway run in a show that
Speaker 1: is touring that doesn't lead to another Broadway role.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't do. I'm not. Everybody think it's because I'm
Speaker 2: so animated I can act, But all I can act
Speaker 2: like is me. I can't act like my name is
Speaker 2: Natasha and I have five children a husband who beats me.
Speaker 2: I really think that actors, well, I I like actors
Speaker 2: better than I do singers, because I think that that's
Speaker 2: a either you can saying it's a gift or you've
Speaker 2: got some kind of trick or something that you fool people.
Speaker 2: But acting is you have to believe the person's name
Speaker 2: is Ili May and they kill five people. And I
Speaker 2: think acting is hard and I cannot do it. But
Speaker 2: people think because I'm so animated in my speech and
Speaker 2: just natural me that I can do it. I can't
Speaker 2: remember all those words and assume a whole other attitude
Speaker 2: that isn't me. So when I went to try out
Speaker 2: for and then the dancing, I mean the things you
Speaker 2: have to do in New York to do these shows.
Speaker 2: Unless you've been somebody as a lead actor actress, then
Speaker 2: they want you to come and read things and dance
Speaker 2: and just auditioning itself. I mean, my thing to your
Speaker 2: auditioners are can you say my attitude to be in
Speaker 2: theater is not good. I do the best I can
Speaker 2: to be in the recording industry and working nightclubs with
Speaker 2: theater I could never do. I've done it once and
Speaker 2: that was because they called n.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the Kennedy Center Honors.
Speaker 2: Let me call Kevin. Kevin. I did not rearrange it.
Speaker 1: You said that you couldn't sing it that way. Do
Speaker 1: you need Kevin?
Speaker 2: No, he's here.
Speaker 1: Well, I was just talking to you. But in any event,
Speaker 1: how did you come up with the way you wanted
Speaker 1: to sing it?
Speaker 2: That is so amazing to me. You don't think it
Speaker 2: would be more difficult for me to sing something like
Speaker 2: someone else then singing it like me. But the way
Speaker 2: people understand it is the wrong way. I don't come
Speaker 2: up with it. That's the way it sounded to me.
Speaker 2: I don't. That was one of the early things with
Speaker 2: Jim when he was teaching me all of these Sarah
Speaker 2: Faun and Billy They songs. I thought I couldn't sing
Speaker 2: them because I knew I couldn't sing them like that.
Speaker 2: So I thought I was singing them wrong because I
Speaker 2: couldn't sing them that way. But Jim said stupid woman.
Speaker 2: That's the idea. You're supposed to sing them and sound different.
Speaker 2: I said, but they only sound good if you sing
Speaker 2: them like that, and he said, no that, no, no, here,
Speaker 2: let's start all over again. Yeah. It was a long
Speaker 2: time before I realized that it was okay for me
Speaker 2: to sound different and sing the songs different. I wanted
Speaker 2: to sing them like the people who sung them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've made albums of rock tunes, you've made
Speaker 1: albums of admitting, album of Dylan tunes. You're telling me
Speaker 1: there's not a long process of rearranging how you're going
Speaker 1: to do it. You just hear the song and then
Speaker 1: you do it your way.
Speaker 2: Robert, it's the exact same thing that happens in bed. Okay,
Speaker 2: you don't. You may have seen a sixth film or whatever,
Speaker 2: and let may have given you the initial idea, but
Speaker 2: everybody's different in bed. Credit says, Okay, Henry did this
Speaker 2: just like this, so I'm gonna turn her face around.
Speaker 2: Maybe when you were younger, but everybody's different. And singing
Speaker 2: being a thing that you aren't taught. Either you can sing,
Speaker 2: damn it, or you can't. And I really can't sing.
Speaker 2: But I'm able to present the tunes and present my
Speaker 2: feelings along with them. And my voice doesn't sound awful.
Speaker 2: But when you listen to Louis Armstrong, he can make
Speaker 2: you cry, he can make you laugh. He doesn't sound beautiful.
Speaker 2: But I thought that as a girl, for sure, I
Speaker 2: needed to sound a little more nanse elutionist. And it
Speaker 2: was years before I accepted that the way I sung
Speaker 2: was the way I sung.
Speaker 1: Okay, you said you had a child at sixteen. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I didn't say that I did that well, put was
Speaker 1: that a bump in the road, a tragedy or was
Speaker 1: that you know this? You know I'm pregnant. I have
Speaker 1: a baby. That's it.
Speaker 2: Now. It's pretty bad for my people. They always you
Speaker 2: always want the guy to do right, and you take
Speaker 2: care of the baby. But this thing I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: When I met Lee Jones, my daughter was six months old,
Speaker 2: and I had my sister, who was thirteen years older
Speaker 2: than me, was still there and my mother and they
Speaker 2: took the baby. They just took the baby. At one point,
Speaker 2: I said, I'm leaving and I'm taking my baby. And
Speaker 2: I always cry about it when I get drunk. It
Speaker 2: was the first time that, the only time I pushed
Speaker 2: my sister. She was trying to take the baby. Had
Speaker 2: she not taken the baby, they probably wouldn't have even
Speaker 2: been a baby. But they wanted me. I was the
Speaker 2: first person my family make one hundred dollars in one
Speaker 2: day in cash money and bring it home. They wanted
Speaker 2: me to sing. They said, you all these women in
Speaker 2: this house. My grandson now calls all his women, but
Speaker 2: he's the first boy in one hundred years. But my
Speaker 2: mother and my sister wanted me to sing. We've never
Speaker 2: had anything or done anything. And people were talking about
Speaker 2: me on a radio and recognizing me in a supermarket
Speaker 2: and whatever. They didn't say, come home and be a
Speaker 2: good mother. They said, we got this. You go sing,
Speaker 2: and they raised her.
Speaker 1: How many children do you have?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: And be he's it?
Speaker 1: And how many times you've been married?
Speaker 2: Only only the times that were necessary? Three times since
Speaker 2: it is my third husband.
Speaker 1: But wait, wait, wait wait wait now you sometimes didn't No,
Speaker 1: I want to know what you meant, but you said
Speaker 1: only when necessary?
Speaker 2: What is that? Like? I just uh you? You you
Speaker 2: tend to punk out in this business an awful lot,
Speaker 2: and you just want somebody to share a misery with you. Uh,
Speaker 2: so I married one time for that, and I married
Speaker 2: one time because after I was pregnant at sixteen, they
Speaker 2: said you're supposed to get married, and so we did,
Speaker 2: and we're together for gosh, the whole six months, I
Speaker 2: believe it was. But we stayed friends until he died.
Speaker 2: He actually worked on Kevin's car. He's a mechanic. He
Speaker 2: actually worked on Kevin's car when Kevin came to detit
Speaker 2: after I met him and my ex husband was a
Speaker 2: manager for the Hired hotels, and Kevin actually went with
Speaker 2: me to his funeral. Every man, every producer that I
Speaker 2: have ever been, anybody I've ever been involved with, unless
Speaker 2: I stopped speaking to them, I can pick up the
Speaker 2: phone and call them right now.
Speaker 1: How did you meet Kevin?
Speaker 2: Kevin sent me an email after I've been online for
Speaker 2: maybe two weeks or weeks, and he said, my name
Speaker 2: is Kevin Kylie. I've been a fan of yours for
Speaker 2: eleven years and I found out that you were heading
Speaker 2: letting Black record you, and I one suggest that you
Speaker 2: don't do that. It's been years since you've been several
Speaker 2: years since you've had a record of any note, and
Speaker 2: everybody he's recorded, it's been bad, and I don't want
Speaker 2: you to do that. So I sent him a message back,
Speaker 2: one of the first messages I ever because at first
Speaker 2: I thought if I touched these keys, I'm gonna blow
Speaker 2: up mere I say, someone from push the wrong ones.
Speaker 2: But I said, who the fuck are you if you
Speaker 2: don't have any money to take me in the studio,
Speaker 2: sit down somewhere and shut off. And then after Ali
Speaker 2: sent me one back and he said, I'm an antique
Speaker 2: glass dealer and I will be doing a show in Leshroit.
Speaker 2: I would like to take you out to dinner and
Speaker 2: apologize whatever we were having. And he did, and he
Speaker 2: took me out to dinner, and then I took him
Speaker 2: to all the places in our own and that worked well.
Speaker 2: They frightening. I always have if I have one white
Speaker 2: person to my own, I always liked to take them
Speaker 2: into the belly of the music that they say they
Speaker 2: love so much. So that was what I did Kevin,
Speaker 2: and he loved it, and he came back to do
Speaker 2: another show. Then he came back to do another show.
Speaker 2: Then it came back and he brought this with him.
Speaker 1: And which was a ring were audio only.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sorry, and he asked me and am. Actually
Speaker 2: I was in the middle of a rehearsal with the
Speaker 2: band that was going to be this fifth career band,
Speaker 2: with a record that at the time the record company
Speaker 2: owner had disappeared. We could not find him, and we
Speaker 2: were just going to go forward and put the record
Speaker 2: out and do the songs. So Kevin came into all
Speaker 2: of that and helped me a lot with all of that,
Speaker 2: but we thought that it was the best record at
Speaker 2: that point that I had ever recorded. And in the
Speaker 2: owner of record company just dispute.
Speaker 1: That show business.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it, baby, Okay.
Speaker 1: You talk about this parapatetic career ups and downs?
Speaker 2: What how did tarapathetic mean?
Speaker 1: Well, let's leave that for another thing. That's sort of
Speaker 1: like a hollowns whatever. How did you survive.
Speaker 2: Well as somebody? If somebody was always willing to spend
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars to record me, then other people like
Speaker 2: I believe it's a line in Streetcar named desire, and
Speaker 2: girlfriend says, I've always depended upon the kindness of strangers,
Speaker 2: and I've never met a stranger who didn't like me,
Speaker 2: and I've never been ashamed to say I need this
Speaker 2: whole thing here. Will you help me get it, and.
Speaker 3: They have.
Speaker 2: I met. The business itself has been kind in one way,
Speaker 2: and then the other people have helped me stay in
Speaker 2: the business. But people have the stories, Robert, the things
Speaker 2: that I've told you this evening. I mean, if we
Speaker 2: went through it record by record, you could say it
Speaker 2: really it's just been phenomenal. And that makes it so
Speaker 2: much more frustrating how all of these people could have
Speaker 2: spent all of these millions of dollars on me and
Speaker 2: I still can't get it together work. I don't have
Speaker 2: to hustle. And when I say hustle, I mean have
Speaker 2: it doing smaller eggs, or not being able to have
Speaker 2: the whole band with me, or like the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 2: not being able being able to work when I choose
Speaker 2: to work for as long as I choose to work.
Speaker 2: And I think that is when somebody says you don't
Speaker 2: I can't imagine anybody saying you don't deserve that. Nick
Speaker 2: and I of the same age. I sing as well
Speaker 2: as he does. I've had as many records as he has.
Speaker 2: The only thing is mine just didn't sell. Like it's
Speaker 2: so I just I am extremely grateful, but I'm I'm
Speaker 2: just really pissed. At that. But I mean it's like
Speaker 2: if you go and get into a crap game. I mean,
Speaker 2: everybody at the table doesn't win, and I'm just one
Speaker 2: of the ones who did not have that. But as
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not going to die obscure. I know
Speaker 2: that I've done some things that were milestones in this industry.
Speaker 2: And I know that my granddaughter and my grandson will
Speaker 2: be able to somebody's gonna want to talk to them
Speaker 2: about me for all of their lives. Somebody's studying music,
Speaker 2: somebody's studying black music. So I'm really grateful for all
Speaker 2: those things. I thought those things weren't gonna happen, you know.
Speaker 2: I thought it like the first of ten years, and
Speaker 2: nothing happened from them. Of monument, I thought, I'm going
Speaker 2: to die obscure. Nobody's gonna even know I was here.
Speaker 2: Like the people, many of the singers that Jim played
Speaker 2: recordings for that he listened to when he was a
Speaker 2: teenager in the thirties, I've never heard of these people before,
Speaker 2: and they work forever to get these recordings that I said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be one of them. But thank goodness,
Speaker 2: enough things have happened to me. Just you I met
Speaker 2: the people that know you. So many things have happened
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 2: When I get through bugging everybody and die, I know
Speaker 2: I'm not going to die. I thought I was just
Speaker 2: going to be dead and broke.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have to get a street job?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I invented one the high schools that I went to,
Speaker 2: I had to take my grandchildren to the school every morning.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I did while I was
Speaker 2: waiting for this fifth career. Right before it, my grandchildren
Speaker 2: were going to school. My daughter was working. She's a
Speaker 2: Detroit teacher for forty years. She just retired last week.
Speaker 2: And every morning we'd stand there at the bus stop.
Speaker 2: I mean where I had stood at the bus stop
Speaker 2: going to Northern High School, and these young ladies were
Speaker 2: sitting there, and he's smoking, and if he's sitting on
Speaker 2: the little stupid they last gapped open. Well, combed it
Speaker 2: boyfriend's hair or picking it out or whatever. So I
Speaker 2: went and I went to the office. I dropped them
Speaker 2: the kids off one morning and I came back to
Speaker 2: the school and I said, I went to the school.
Speaker 2: I said, my name is Betty. I'm a recording artist.
Speaker 2: One of the first time I ever saw was here
Speaker 2: at the Northern Gym and whatever. And I said, these
Speaker 2: young ladies are sitting out here. They looked horrible. I said,
Speaker 2: they looked just like I probably would have looked had
Speaker 2: show business not saved me. I want to start a
Speaker 2: class teaching them they can't cuss, they can smoke, or
Speaker 2: I want to teach them how whole cigarettes, how to
Speaker 2: cust appropriately, and how to sit up straight and not
Speaker 2: fix their boyfriend's hair on the side of the street.
Speaker 2: And they gave me a job doing that, and then
Speaker 2: I got tired of it. It was boring.
Speaker 1: Wit did you get paid to do that?
Speaker 2: Yell? Shit, I am not a philathropist. I do not
Speaker 2: do volunteer work, I told them, and I told them
Speaker 2: how much I wanted, and all the other teachers in
Speaker 2: the school, which was so thrilling to me. I had
Speaker 2: a little gig. Then I was doing a little local
Speaker 2: television show and Detroit and I had a little gig
Speaker 2: which is three pieces, and all the teachers. It's came
Speaker 2: to see me.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about your word daughter retiring, You're gonna
Speaker 1: be eighty. You theoretically could retire.
Speaker 2: No, I can if I need money to live like this.
Speaker 2: I could retire if I wanted to just live like
Speaker 2: a normal person. But I don't live like a normal person.
Speaker 2: I drink lots of champagne. All that stuff costs money, Robert.
Speaker 2: I have to have my nails, all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 2: habits I picked up for being in this swilthy business.
Speaker 1: How much of working is to pay the bills? And
Speaker 1: how much of you still want that recognition and money
Speaker 1: beyond what you have already?
Speaker 2: Oh? I still want. I am still hoping. I always
Speaker 2: still hope that I have friends in Detroit Worth streets,
Speaker 2: name at Roma on streets I used to play on.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I think that that will always be nagging.
Speaker 2: But I think that if I knew that I could
Speaker 2: not sing and live the way that I live. I
Speaker 2: live really comfortably. But it's not because I made so
Speaker 2: much money. It's because I have to keep making money,
Speaker 2: and I just wanted to change from I have to
Speaker 2: keep making money. As I said to you early on,
Speaker 2: I'm looking for this Rach Charl's life. I can't think
Speaker 2: of anybody else right off top of my head before
Speaker 2: they work six months a year at these huge concerts.
Speaker 2: The last concert ra Charald's did before he died. Now,
Speaker 2: this is ironic I did, which is in the one
Speaker 2: hundred most renown on disco records, doing the best that
Speaker 2: I can the producer of that was eighteen years old
Speaker 2: at the time, and create it Run DMC and went
Speaker 2: on to all of that. I left him because I
Speaker 2: didn't want him involved in that. I told him he
Speaker 2: could have any money that the record garnered and I'm
Speaker 2: cool and I love him, and I left. In this
Speaker 2: fifth career, I was working at the Carlisle Hotel, which
Speaker 2: I would love to work and just died there on stage.
Speaker 2: He came to see me, now after all of these
Speaker 2: years and him being such a success in the beginning
Speaker 2: of rap, and brought me a check. He said, Now,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't owe this to you, he said,
Speaker 2: but because I signed a paper same, you don't owe
Speaker 2: me anything. But he came and brought me a check.
Speaker 2: That's how my whole career has been. It's been fans
Speaker 2: or people who sincerely adored me, that just they I
Speaker 2: could sing good, they sincerely adored me. And Corey Robbins
Speaker 2: there the name of his record label. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know anything about Run the UFC. You know
Speaker 2: what the first record label was.
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree have you experienced racism and to
Speaker 1: what degree do you believe it affected your career.
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't experienced anymore than when I was saying
Speaker 2: when we were on the uh, I'm not putting this
Speaker 2: on and look cute for you. I'm looking putting this
Speaker 2: on so my lips won't be dry.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I experienced it only in the general sense, like when
Speaker 2: we couldn't stay at hotels and we couldn't go to
Speaker 2: some of the restaurants. But entertainers have had a much
Speaker 2: easier time in the business as hardcore segregation went. So
Speaker 2: I didn't suffer from because I was in show business.
Speaker 2: You asked me another part to that question, doing what
Speaker 2: is it? Oh? Okay, I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 2: I recorded or recording which was written for me called
Speaker 2: He Made a Woman out of Me, which is the
Speaker 2: recording that I did for Kenny Rogers's brother Leland Rodgers,
Speaker 2: when he signed me to his label Silver Fox, which
Speaker 2: belonged to show Bey singled.
Speaker 1: And she.
Speaker 2: Started looking for writers to write for me and found
Speaker 2: some writers who wrote this He Made a Woman out
Speaker 2: of Me. Re recorded it along with everybody just on
Speaker 2: the record as somebody who is who has become rich.
Speaker 2: See those kind of things annoying. But what's her name?
Speaker 2: Billy Joe Joe mcallis, sir jumped off back out, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's her name? She recorded it? Hers was in the
Speaker 2: top five. We didn't I changed. She changed one word.
Speaker 2: It was suggestive anyway, that's how the lyric went. But
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't say anything that made it any
Speaker 2: more suggested than she did. And mine could not get
Speaker 2: any white airplay. I was trying to get some white
Speaker 2: airplay before for condition. My condition is in so we
Speaker 2: said before we recorded it, let's do no not for condition.
Speaker 2: A heart of Gold. Neil Younglook's from Canada, said we
Speaker 2: can get some play in Canada because Canadians play everything
Speaker 2: that every artist from Canada makes. They don't care if
Speaker 2: their orange green I played, I played, I did hard.
Speaker 2: Gold got a lot of Canadian airplay, but not enough,
Speaker 2: and it just never caught on in America. But and
Speaker 2: through the whole sixty five years, Robert, I've collected each
Speaker 2: one of these things I'm telling you about. I collected
Speaker 2: about ten thousand and fans, I mean, hope to die
Speaker 2: fans so I've collected these ten thousand fans at a time,
Speaker 2: ten thousands at a.
Speaker 1: Time, you know they can support you. Well, it's been
Speaker 1: fascinating and the great experience talking to you, Betty. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for taking this time
Speaker 1: with my audience.
Speaker 2: Maybe I want to thank you so much for taking
Speaker 2: this time to talk to me. It's all time, but
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you this. When do you sleep?
Speaker 2: And do you have like a team of people that
Speaker 2: worked with you?
Speaker 1: Two things. I'll answer the second question. First, I do
Speaker 1: it all myself. Okay, songwriters they will often say the
Speaker 1: song came to them in five minutes and they wrote it.
Speaker 1: And then there are other people who might labor over
Speaker 1: a song Leonard Cohen for over a year. And I
Speaker 1: write only on inspiration, and when I'm inspired, I lay
Speaker 1: it all out. It's like being in a trance. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't do it the way other people.
Speaker 1: Most people will tell you two things that they like
Speaker 1: to have written. They say that writing is achure and
Speaker 1: they say that writing is about rewriting. I could not
Speaker 1: disagree more. You know, I lay it out. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll look for obvious mistakes, but I've learned. I've been
Speaker 1: doing a long time. If I change anything, I screw
Speaker 1: it up, so I would not think about it relative
Speaker 1: to a traditional writer. I would think it more about
Speaker 1: it compared to a musician.
Speaker 2: Do you that the label you consider yourself a writer?
Speaker 1: Yes, first and foremost.
Speaker 2: More than in the end of view or.
Speaker 1: Love to get people's stories. This is something I've done,
Speaker 1: irrelevant of having a podcast.
Speaker 2: Have you ever read your column? I looked at it.
Speaker 2: I don't mean before you post it. I mean after
Speaker 2: you posted.
Speaker 1: I read, okay, I know, okay. Two things I reread.
Speaker 1: I check everything twice before I send it. Second, like
Speaker 1: an artist, I rarely read what I have written, and
Speaker 1: it's not I guess this is this wild. I can't
Speaker 1: believe we're talking about this. These things are written in
Speaker 1: a zone such that when you reread them. I reread them,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of the zone. But I'm not in
Speaker 1: that particular zone anymore. As opposed to saying somebody can write.
Speaker 1: I went to the bookstore, I had a drink, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But if I'm writing about something that truly
Speaker 1: affects me, I that's a time castle I felt that
Speaker 1: way exactly. Then sometimes when I reread it, it's like shocking,
Speaker 1: It's like, is that really?
Speaker 2: But I ask you that because it seems I can't
Speaker 2: imagine when you sleep or when or how you could
Speaker 2: do all this without you. I have often heard something
Speaker 2: before I went to sleep at one o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: Then I'll get up and I'll maybe not turn on
Speaker 2: my back that well, sometimes i'll turn it over to
Speaker 2: be but where I turn it on, it's like almost
Speaker 2: by the hour everything that happened, you know about it,
Speaker 2: but you also know what everybody was doing in their
Speaker 2: leisure time. When I say that, I mean what shows
Speaker 2: happening whatever, So it's not only everything that happened to
Speaker 2: the world and everybody that day. And then at seven
Speaker 2: o'clock Julie met went on and said, I've got something
Speaker 2: about that. Then after that show, then this it sounds
Speaker 2: as if you never ever sleep.
Speaker 1: Okay, actually I do sleep, but I'm not that different
Speaker 1: from you.
Speaker 2: How many hours do you sleep?
Speaker 1: Well, you know I sleep a good eight hours. But
Speaker 1: because you have to be creative, you have to get
Speaker 1: a good sleep. But I'm not that different. I don't
Speaker 1: have any children.
Speaker 2: But it means like your damn head with bursts. I mean, well,
Speaker 2: I don't this is what happens.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: That's what it seems like, as why I say, when
Speaker 2: do you sleep? Okay, listen, you just made the declaration
Speaker 2: I'm doing this twenty four seven. What was my question?
Speaker 2: Let me we what was my.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a term of speech other than when
Speaker 1: I am sleeping. I am doing this all when I awake.
Speaker 1: I really I love to know what's going on. I
Speaker 1: love the pulse I'm reading for the moment I get up.
Speaker 2: That is, I'm apparent. The only thing that isn't apparent
Speaker 2: to me is when do you sleep? But you seem
Speaker 2: as though you have got your favor on the pulse
Speaker 2: of the entire world, being music, war or gristal gorilla
Speaker 2: wrestling whatever. I just said. Well, I'm extremely nosy myself.
Speaker 2: I always want to know everything that everybody is doing
Speaker 2: and I but I just don't understand how you're able
Speaker 2: to do it and to do it so eloquently. It
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like when when you can tell that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is watching everything, but he snatches things. His opinion
Speaker 2: is off there like and blah blah, blah lad about
Speaker 2: that yours isn't. You always have an actual thing to
Speaker 2: say about whatever it whatever it is that happened. And
Speaker 2: I just absolutely find you so got me completely amazing.
Speaker 2: I talk about you want my husband than you know
Speaker 2: that I talk about you, But honestly, I am just
Speaker 2: amazed at the things you know and how well thought
Speaker 2: out the myriad things you do are. And you would
Speaker 2: think that with it being so much of everybody else's business,
Speaker 2: every once knows why you would kind of step up
Speaker 2: which off, but you never do. You're right on it,
Speaker 2: like I was right there. Yep, I was over there too,
Speaker 2: and I was back there and I was up here.
Speaker 2: And you're an amaze easy individual, you really are. I'm
Speaker 2: so grateful to you for your interest and your your
Speaker 2: in factness that you speak about music. I can see
Speaker 2: where oft times you try to, especially when it gets
Speaker 2: to somebody you like and you understand what happened to them.
Speaker 2: I can see where you kind of push what you
Speaker 2: felt off and try to get to the matter of it.
Speaker 2: You can't always, but I love what you decide to
Speaker 2: do in lieu of being able to be I don't
Speaker 2: care about a matter of factly, but I absolutely love
Speaker 2: what you do and I'm so grateful that you wrote
Speaker 2: what you wrote about me. See there again that everybody
Speaker 2: adores you so much. If they just happen to look
Speaker 2: at you, they'll see what you see it about me
Speaker 2: when you wrote about the Interpretations album, so that was
Speaker 2: one of the biggest boosts that the Interpretation album, and
Speaker 2: that was I know you think about it when you
Speaker 2: think in terms of stars anyways, so you're just thinking
Speaker 2: something else that you somebody else wrote, but that was
Speaker 2: maybe what you write. Don't help rolling stones. You write
Speaker 2: about me, that is a tremendous hope to me possibly
Speaker 2: having a sixth.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a Yiddish term called kevelling, and that I
Speaker 1: can't respond.
Speaker 2: Say it cavelling, cavell.
Speaker 1: Kvk okay, and the dictionary of what they're given here
Speaker 1: they say to feel happy and proud. But you know
Speaker 1: they use an example here My mom was kvelling, bursting
Speaker 1: with pride. I can't respond. Okay, let me be very clear,
Speaker 1: I can't respond to what you say. But this is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do now. The fact that you
Speaker 1: get the fact that you get it is.
Speaker 2: For you really, are anybody doing it you really really are.
Speaker 2: They tied me because I was doing like I was
Speaker 2: talking to students at the University of Texas. It was
Speaker 2: kind of a gig. Well, no, it was a gig
Speaker 2: they paid me, but talking to the class, believe it
Speaker 2: or not, a Bob Dylan class. And I'm like, see,
Speaker 2: that's ultimuch for me. But they told me, they said,
Speaker 2: try not to sound like they shouldn't get in show business.
Speaker 2: I said, I can't do that, because they shouldn't. It's
Speaker 2: not like you think it is. And I can only
Speaker 2: tell you.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You and me both know
Speaker 1: in order to be successful, you have to have no
Speaker 1: other choice.
Speaker 2: You have to do it well that I try to
Speaker 2: tell them. For the like being, it's either like being
Speaker 2: and the husband who beats you, or being strung out
Speaker 2: on drugs or being a born again Christian. I mean it,
Speaker 2: it is for everybody in my life. It is Betty
Speaker 2: Lovette that is the main thing in everybody's life close
Speaker 2: around me. And then so if I'm going to be
Speaker 2: true and faithful and friends to them as well, I
Speaker 2: have to devote my life to the broad too. And
Speaker 2: that is it. You should hear me cussing hears sometimes
Speaker 2: I'm like lifting ways like this, bitch, I'm not just
Speaker 2: gonna die. I mean, but either you have to do
Speaker 2: it or you have to don't. And you you handle
Speaker 2: it in such a way I know what it takes.
Speaker 2: So that's why I wonder when you sleep, because I
Speaker 2: can tell from what you say that you had to
Speaker 2: be watching it to know it.
Speaker 1: Well. You others a soul by ac DC called It's
Speaker 1: a long way to the top. If you want to
Speaker 1: rock and roll, and you're talking to me now, it
Speaker 1: took a long time and a lot of struggle to
Speaker 1: get here. I'm not going to delineate everything else you do.
Speaker 1: Before I went to college, I was a starving freestyle skier,
Speaker 1: and I went to law school. I practiced law for
Speaker 1: about ten minutes. Then I work for a movie producer.
Speaker 1: Then I work for an English management company that brings
Speaker 1: us to.
Speaker 2: The English management company.
Speaker 1: They manage Iron Maiden. Oh okay, And then since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, this is what I've been doing.
Speaker 2: You talking. When you read your writings, it sounds like
Speaker 2: something that is a liticit. Did youlyticate everything? It doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like a regular person talking.
Speaker 1: I definitely we're talking about office. The most important thing
Speaker 1: to me is to walk the knife edge, split the hair.
Speaker 2: What you sound like in a journey?
Speaker 1: No, but it's I was this person, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you get older, you're this person now. Well, but
Speaker 1: you get older and you realize you're your parents. My
Speaker 1: father was this person. Okay, my father would say, what's
Speaker 1: the real story here? Like you see somebody driving an
Speaker 1: expensive car who doesn't have a job, Well, the real
Speaker 1: story is either it's not their car, they can't afford it,
Speaker 1: or they inherited money. But they're people. This is just
Speaker 1: like you talking about your friends saying, go tell Jerry
Speaker 1: Wexler that you know they don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: but they believe they think they do. That's how the
Speaker 1: average person is.
Speaker 2: But you look at things. You look at things like
Speaker 2: a liter literator, You look at them literally. When I
Speaker 2: read you, you don't talk while I can see the
Speaker 2: fan is there. That is what we as entertainers look for.
Speaker 2: But when you start to look at it literally, which
Speaker 2: is I think something you said made me respond to you,
Speaker 2: you were looking at it literally, and that commands a
Speaker 2: different response from me. I know when when I'm being
Speaker 2: congratulated and when I'm being loved and whatever, well, when
Speaker 2: I'm being looked at literally, I know that as well.
Speaker 2: And you look at things literally. I'm glad that you do.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you tell people about it more literally
Speaker 2: than just what they ate.
Speaker 1: There's that song by Leonard Cohen. Everybody knows, everybody knows
Speaker 1: the truth. But one Okay, my psychiatrists sometimes sometime, right,
Speaker 1: you can change one little thing and it changes the
Speaker 1: entire pictures. And I don't want to give any names here,
Speaker 1: but a household name musician. I went to a performance
Speaker 1: and this person likes to get things perfect. And I
Speaker 1: asked the manager what this person thought of the show,
Speaker 1: and the manager said, well, the he thought that in
Speaker 1: ear monitors were screwed up. You heard a little too
Speaker 1: much of the horn section. This is all real story.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to mention the name I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I was at the show and I said, you know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. I couldn't hear that, Okay, but
Speaker 1: I don't think the average person worked. And he said,
Speaker 1: those little tiny things are the difference between success and failure.
Speaker 1: The artist I'm talking about is as big as they get. Okay,
Speaker 1: And now I'm gonna get on my high horse. The
Speaker 1: average person doesn't want to work that hard and get
Speaker 1: it right. You're telling me you've only had five careers
Speaker 1: because you keep trying to do it. Most people don't
Speaker 1: have five careers. They give up, They give up. And
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of talented people who have never had success because
Speaker 1: talent is at most fifty percent the desire and all that.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, but people don't want to hear that. Listen,
Speaker 1: you're a musician.
Speaker 2: You know that.
Speaker 1: When you hang out in the dressing room or after
Speaker 1: the show with musicians, it's a completely different kind of
Speaker 1: conversation than when you have, you know, with the next
Speaker 1: door neighbor. Right right, It's like these people they're in
Speaker 1: a separate club, separate community. They're not judging on money,
Speaker 1: and they know the system is against them, but they're doing.
Speaker 2: What they have to.
Speaker 1: But unless you're in that world, people don't understand that.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely absolutely. I really just don't think that people
Speaker 2: understand how this goes. And I think that we are
Speaker 2: only two percent of us. It seems like all of
Speaker 2: us now, but still it said about only two percent
Speaker 2: of us who walk upon the stage and do this
Speaker 2: for a living, you know.
Speaker 1: And well what bothers me now is because the barrier
Speaker 1: to entry is non existent. Anybody can make a record.
Speaker 2: Of their bubble.
Speaker 1: You, but it means that they believe that they're entitled
Speaker 1: to success. I mean, some of this is very simple.
Speaker 1: You make it your to like it. Okay, fine, you
Speaker 1: played it for your friends. They said they like it too.
Speaker 1: Did they play it for anybody else? Did they turn
Speaker 1: anybody else?
Speaker 2: But they told me to stop telling the children. I said,
Speaker 2: now that if the church and your family and all
Speaker 2: your friends are the ones that's like you. When I
Speaker 2: asked him, I said, can you sing? I said, now,
Speaker 2: I don't want to know the opinion of those people.
Speaker 2: Has anyone ever given you any money to sing? I said, now,
Speaker 2: you've got that is one foot if someone has said here,
Speaker 2: I like the way you're saying, here's some money to
Speaker 2: do it. Other than that, I don't count any of
Speaker 2: those opinions. And that was that was one of the
Speaker 2: things they were telling me to stop telling the kids
Speaker 2: that I was talking to. I said, I don't know them, though,
Speaker 2: I have to tell them that because it's the truth.
Speaker 1: Well, well, I've had this experience many a time, where
Speaker 1: you speak to clashes and wannabes. I don't want to
Speaker 1: give them false hope. No, unless this is the only
Speaker 1: thing you're willing to do, and you're willing to starve,
Speaker 1: not on a house, not on a car.
Speaker 2: This is not for you. But when you until it
Speaker 2: happens to you. Robert, you couldn't have told me. You
Speaker 2: couldn't have made me not do this by telling me
Speaker 2: the things that were gonna happen to me. Before I
Speaker 2: was thirty, I would have said, hey, i'm ow. If
Speaker 2: you had told if anybody had told me, if they
Speaker 2: could actual show me, like a video, now this is
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen, it showed it to me, it would
Speaker 2: have been different. But I feel an incumbent upon me,
Speaker 2: you know it, to say, I can't say to you
Speaker 2: keep trying and try hard. And then I always tell them,
Speaker 2: especially if it's young females. I'm talking to you, like
Speaker 2: and I'm doing these group shows, like I've got one
Speaker 2: coming up at Carnegie Hall, and all these young women
Speaker 2: they were in my dressing room. They're looking straight in
Speaker 2: my mouth. I said, the best thing I can tell
Speaker 2: you is that if you walk into a small place
Speaker 2: with an acoustic piano and they sang, say sang a
Speaker 2: real song. I don't care how big your record is,
Speaker 2: I will kick your ass. It was done to me,
Speaker 2: big maype Ell did it to me. I was running
Speaker 2: Small's paradise. My waistline was tiny and my booty was big,
Speaker 2: and I can holler out, I could say got lots
Speaker 2: and the people which is screened. Maybe El breathed in
Speaker 2: there in papal shoes from the hospital she had just
Speaker 2: escaped from, walked up on the stage, wrapped in a
Speaker 2: blanket with a some Burrow type hat on, and said God,
Speaker 2: and and the band knew what kid was in. That
Speaker 2: still perflects me. I didn't know how the band knew
Speaker 2: what kid was in. And they didn't talk to me
Speaker 2: anymore for the whole evening, nobody and I was looking
Speaker 2: so cute. So that's another thing that I always tell
Speaker 2: them to beware of me in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: in the milial set in a small place.
Speaker 1: Well, we're on the same page here.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell another story. What I'm heard again said,
Speaker 1: you know that's Atlantic Records. A hit record is a
Speaker 1: record that you're lying in bed, you hear on the radio,
Speaker 1: you have to get up, get dressed, and go to
Speaker 1: an all night record store to buy You know that
Speaker 1: is a hit record, right, I don't understand. Well, you
Speaker 1: know it's like you know it when you hear it.
Speaker 2: I heard damn your Eyes on my way to a gig.
Speaker 2: I had my road and just stopped. I went in
Speaker 2: and audit. I rehearsed it all night in my hotel room,
Speaker 2: and I sung it the next morning. That's a hit record, yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure. No, and it's it's it's well here there
Speaker 2: goes back to that thing with womit again and and uh,
Speaker 2: Jerry Wexler, Now Jerry West was on my side. But
Speaker 2: I'm sure that when Jerry Wexler tolhamed what I said,
Speaker 2: is it that bitch's crazy, let's let her go.
Speaker 1: Well that's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 2: Read his name. That's what made me think of it.
Speaker 2: But no, a hit record. At Motown they used to say,
Speaker 2: if you don't like it in the first six bars,
Speaker 2: even before somebody starts singing, it's not a hit record.
Speaker 2: They looked at it as records at Motown didn't make
Speaker 2: any different. Willie who was singing if it was a
Speaker 2: hit record, and they made records over there. They didn't
Speaker 2: record artists, they made records. I know how many of
Speaker 2: these people sound in the shower, you know what. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that if you and I'm Kevin would have to
Speaker 2: separate us. But well, yes, it separates me from you
Speaker 2: on the little beautif thing. What I said, finally a
Speaker 2: man that I can argue with.
Speaker 1: Who agrees with me, as I say, I don't like
Speaker 1: to argue for the sake of arguing, but the little points.
Speaker 1: Argue all day, and it makes people makes people crazy.
Speaker 1: They say, get over it.
Speaker 2: So this is important. You four? When is your birthday?
Speaker 1: April?
Speaker 2: And Aries and Aries?
Speaker 1: No, no, Taurus.
Speaker 2: Well they've all liked me, and we've never looked me,
Speaker 2: but we were usually arguing about the same thing. But you,
Speaker 2: I really just I get a chance to bounce you
Speaker 2: off of me more than you do me off you,
Speaker 2: because I get a chance to read your column and
Speaker 2: you know off see how I feel about it. Whatever.
Speaker 2: But I think if you and I talked all day,
Speaker 2: we were straightened out the entire problems with a whole
Speaker 2: goddamn world. They would just listen to us.
Speaker 1: That goes to the next one that goes to the
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson point. People can't you know that Jack Nicholson
Speaker 1: in that movie A Few good Men. People can't handle
Speaker 1: the truth?
Speaker 2: No, oh oh honey, oh oh, they really really can't.
Speaker 2: I mean I know that there were some truths that
Speaker 2: I could not handle, but I was begging for and
Speaker 2: I crawled up into that little hole and found out
Speaker 2: the truth and it said PLoP. But people can they
Speaker 2: can't stand and slap. It's gonna come with that truth.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. You've seen to be that same
Speaker 2: kind of idiot, like curious, crazy than I am. And
Speaker 2: you just say, well, why is that you said you
Speaker 2: aren't married?
Speaker 1: That's exactly who I am.
Speaker 2: You are married. You aren't married.
Speaker 1: I was married once. I am now with the same
Speaker 1: girlfriend for twenty years. We lived together.
Speaker 2: Oh, you should definitely keep her if you were fortunate
Speaker 2: enough to find her and she's willing to stay for you,
Speaker 2: with you for that long. Always considered that because you
Speaker 2: really are an exceptionally unusual individual.
Speaker 1: And she also play this for her.
Speaker 2: But she has to be that kind of individual too,
Speaker 2: can so accept that person? Like Kevin, I'm very much
Speaker 2: like you Kevin. A man has to live with a
Speaker 2: woman who he doesn't feel constantly disrespected by. Every word
Speaker 2: I say doesn't make him, doesn't offend him. You know,
Speaker 2: he has to get over all of that because this
Speaker 2: is how I am. And he's accepted the fact that
Speaker 2: I'm willing to lay down with him every night, who
Speaker 2: all day for him, do all the one hundred when
Speaker 2: I'm here. If I say something, I'm not saying it
Speaker 2: to disrespect you. I'm saying it because that's what happened.
Speaker 2: And I'm not a housewife.
Speaker 1: We're on the same page, I know.
Speaker 2: And that's how come nobody likes us. Wait a minute,
Speaker 2: but everybody wants to know what we've got to say.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's a lot in therapy. God, I
Speaker 1: can't believe going on about this. This is really the
Speaker 1: only thing I can do what other people can do.
Speaker 1: I can't do what other people do really well, is
Speaker 1: be a member of the group, get along and make
Speaker 1: it work.
Speaker 2: Didn't I tell you to put me out at a choir?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I mean, God bless them. I've worked in these organizations
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't have the personality where I'm
Speaker 1: gonna move up in the organization. They don't want somebody
Speaker 1: like me. They want somebody who kisses ass and you know,
Speaker 1: can have fun and you can help owe each other.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm lucky enough to know that people
Speaker 1: are hungry for the truth.
Speaker 2: They absolutely are. But not having ever seen anything, I
Speaker 2: think it comes maybe natural to us, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: frighten us. It just comes so natural. But if you've
Speaker 2: never heard it, if you've never heard it before, and
Speaker 2: it's standing there before you, it I have to sometimes
Speaker 2: look at the things I believe and the things I say,
Speaker 2: and I try and understand how it floored people. And
Speaker 2: I've never had to go back to anyone and apologize
Speaker 2: apologize so because I said exactly what I meant if
Speaker 2: I come back to you is to make you understand
Speaker 2: why I said it. But it's not to apologize.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say I was in a really bad
Speaker 1: spot and I got hooked up with this psychiatrist and
Speaker 1: he he would never tell me what to do, and
Speaker 1: he barely speaks. It's like psychoanalysis. But through this process
Speaker 1: I've learned, you know, I've learned a lot of things
Speaker 1: how to get along, to make it work. And without that,
Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't happen because I was a prisoner of
Speaker 1: my upbringing. That that's not you know, the lessons I
Speaker 1: didn't learn. But it's still a struggle. But like you,
Speaker 1: I'm continuing to do it.
Speaker 2: Well, I get exasperated at this point because I've done
Speaker 2: the psychiatrist thing and it's just almost everything that anyone
Speaker 2: would advise I've done. And it's being in show business
Speaker 2: over seventy years. Is I mean, there just isn't anything
Speaker 2: that's happened to me. Everything that happened to you in
Speaker 2: school had already happened to me as a MIDI levet.
Speaker 2: I just how old are you?
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is bout seven. I'm seventy two.
Speaker 2: Well, we age actually in groups of five, so you're eight.
Speaker 1: Let's flip the story over, okay, And I'm not blowing smoke. Yes,
Speaker 1: you were not happy that you don't have this financial status, okay,
Speaker 1: but what you've achieved almost no one has achieved. In addition,
Speaker 1: I say this about myself.
Speaker 2: You can like me or not like me.
Speaker 1: But if you like me, I'm the only place you
Speaker 1: can get what I do exactly exactly like you. If
Speaker 1: you like Betty Levette, no one can say, oh, they
Speaker 1: had a hit record and had the same producer the
Speaker 1: right way. They say, that's a unique thing. You may
Speaker 1: not like it, but if you like it, it's the
Speaker 1: only place you can get it. And it's worked for you.
Speaker 2: Robert, that is why two of us in this whole business.
Speaker 2: It's too much. I honestly, really you are. It's this
Speaker 2: child who wrote all the songs in this last album,
Speaker 2: Randall Bramblett. He has this tune. I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: see someone exactly like me. Maybe one day I'll run
Speaker 2: into myself.
Speaker 1: Well, we're all looking to be known and understood.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I would rather have understanding than anything else. If
Speaker 2: you want, if you hate me and you are understanding,
Speaker 2: at least sure why Oh I agree with that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I really know that. That that's it, Kevin. When I
Speaker 2: met him, I said, I will when I am not
Speaker 2: being Betty Lovett, I will certainly gladly be Missus Kyley.
Speaker 2: That's the way I was raised. I keep this house clean.
Speaker 2: I could have a housekeeper, but I don't want another
Speaker 2: bro walking all over my house and looking my underwear
Speaker 2: and dirty clothes and stuff. So I cleaned this house.
Speaker 2: It may take me a longer time n cleaning. I
Speaker 2: do everything here myself, I say, I will be drunk,
Speaker 2: I will have to have marijuana every day. I will
Speaker 2: never miss a show, I will never be late, and
Speaker 2: none of the self. I mean. I will never look
Speaker 2: in your wallet or ask you where you've been, or
Speaker 2: ask you why you weren't here. I laid everything that
Speaker 2: I am out and that's how I am, I said,
Speaker 2: and that is the reason I have all my husbands,
Speaker 2: all my boyfriends, and all of my producers cool. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I could take you, you know they my mother used
Speaker 2: to say a thing in New Orleans, Well, in Louisiana,
Speaker 2: you know, the houses used to be way up off
Speaker 2: the ground because of the water, right, And when you
Speaker 2: like something in the summertime of whatever, if you like
Speaker 2: you take it and go up under the house with
Speaker 2: it and got a hide there. Will I could take
Speaker 2: you and run up under the house with you.
Speaker 1: I can't. We gotta stop now because I can't respond
Speaker 1: to that and run up in the house with you. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've been listening to me with Betty Levette, the one
Speaker 1: and only Betty. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time with my audience. Kill me next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left set