- (FBE) So I don't know if you remember this,
but recently you provided us with some pictures of yourself
of when you were younger. - Oh no! (laughing)
- Oh, yes.
- (FBE) Here's the first photo you provided.
- Oh my goodness. I think I was 12.
We lived in a small town, in a rural town,
so there were always chores to do.
Plumerville, Arkansas.
It's about 50 miles south of Little Rock.
So it wasn't even 1,000 people in population.
- Aw. (laughing)
I was eight years old. I was in the third grade.
And my mother used to set my hair in pin curls.
We lived at this time in a house.
It was at the edge of the vineyards in Ontario.
Abandoned vineyards, which is now
all the Ontario International Airport.
But anyway, we'd play hide-and-seek in there
and it was a spooky place and I remember racing bikes.
- I think I was 12 in this because I was in the Boy Scouts.
You won't believe what troop I was in.
You know, when you're in the Boy Scouts,
you're in troop number such-and-such.
Do you know about that? I was in troop 69.
I was in the Beaver Patrol, troop 69.
Never thought about it until years later,
and then I remembered-- I was trying to impress a girl
in college or something.
"Hey, baby, I was in troop 69, Beaver Patrol."
Get outta here, you know?
It was a carefree and wonderful existence.
- So I am 17 and I am in a class of 21 graduates,
so it was a small town with a small school.
I had a good time in high school.
I was voted to be the most popular and most likely to be successful
by my high school peers.
Yeah. (laughing)
And here I am on Elders React. (laughing)
- That's my high school graduation photo.
My favorite thing about high school is I competed in forensics
and speech, and I did pretty well in that
and, you know, proms, and I married my high school sweetheart.
In those days, you married young, mostly.
A lot of people did.
Things were different then.
You were expected to be a mother-- you know, a wife and a mother.
- That was at graduation from high school,
when I was 17.
I graduated from high school very young.
I graduated from high school in 1958.
Things were totally different then.
You had the draft also coming up in a few years,
so you had to go to school.
So basically, I was hoping to be successful
and find out what I really should do by going to college.
- I had moved to Washington, DC, and was working,
and I started singing.
I made my singing debut at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel
in Washington, DC, in a little lounge called
The Apple of Eve.
I joined a Cuban jazz combo called the Al Martinez jazz combo.
That's how I made my singing debut in Washington, DC.
Gee, I'm going down memory lane and it feels good, too,
to talk about it.
- I went into radio at one point and this was out in San Bernadino.
They wanted us to do a challenge, the two DJs and me.
I was the newsperson.
So the people who owned this car said, look, we're going to train you
how to race, so I raced around that oval a lot,
and I figured out how you accelerate, how you make the turn,
how you do this and that.
I did pretty darn good.
- There it is.
There's my college swim team, a couple of my buddies.
I wonder if they're still alive.
I haven't seen them for 50 or 60 years.
That's Ira Gruber on the left and Jack Goldsmith in the middle.
I was a distance swimmer.
I don't know if you don't know what that means,
but I swam the 1500 meters.
I was actually in a rock and roll band on the weekend.
So I'd swim, we'd go to swim meets,
come back, and Saturday nights, I was in a rock and roll band
and that's one of the ways I paid my way through college.
Phil Painter and the Knockabouts. You've probably heard of them.
- When I left the Al Martinez jazz combo,
and I started my own jazz and blues band,
called the Ruby Haze jazz and blues band,
and performed all around Washington, DC,
and New York, Florida.
And this photo here was taken in San Diego,
where I was headliner at the Adams Avenue
Street Fair festival.
There was a point in there where I got married
and I divorced and became a single parent,
and I put my career on hold for family matters,
and for about 15 years.
Then I returned to my singing career.
I took out an equity loan and went into the studio
and made my first album.
- This is of me as a teacher.
I taught middle school and high school history.
If you care about the kids, if you're willing to do the work,
the size of the class isn't what matters.
It's the caring that matters.
And we had a good time, you know?
I'm very proud of the work I did.
- I'm marching off to Vietnam on the last day of boot camp.
I was in the Navy in Vietnam.
So I was on a ship off the coast of Vietnam,
going back and forth, stopping people
and shooting things and stuff.
They found out I could swim, so I was the guy
that would go in the water if any planes crashed
to get the pilots out.
I was in the Navy six years, but two years on active duty.
And it's something I did because I thought
that's what you had to do, you know.
You were kind of an automaton in those days.
You did what you were supposed to do.
You went to school, you went to college,
you went in the service, you got a job,
a wife, and you had kids.
I did all that.
I didn't talk about this for 30 years.
I'm surprised I'm talking about it now.
- (FBE) It becomes easier and easier over time
to capture moments from your life.
What is it like for you to come from a time
where photography wasn't as easily accessible
to now being able to capture every little piece of your life
and have your opinions heard on this show?
- It's super interesting.
It's like there's no area of your life that isn't recorded somewhere,
and it's just a very different and very in-a-fish-bowl kind of life
than it ever was.
Things are just more accurate and more open.
Everybody knows about them and I think it's better.
- For independent artists, these are all the tools
we need-- photography, videos.
It seems like that evolved right along with the new movement
of the independent artist.
Someone miles away in other countries can find you
and can invite you to come and do a very exciting,
exotic gig somewhere.
- That's just one aspect of the differences
of me growing up and today, absolutely.
Communication and phone, pictures.
Pictures were very hard to-- it wasn't that easy.
You had to set it up.
You know, I really had a great childhood
and I grew up in a great time.
I'm looking forward to a terrific next 10 or 15 years.
You got to keep busy, have people to love,
and I think you need to have things to look forward to.
That's my philosophy now.
♪ (ragtime outro) ♪