1 10 5 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/8e9cfbd0e05f969aef90b1ca2e530a63.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=Tbno-rykca0mprYj8er8z6GBjqRuSAd-l8K%7E9W%7EdDexfuM6bASLnJH9O0RkFb0Bz4nCZo8HG18acSMds88T4sIItPGKEDfzAoAOOf3wH9NEi792J500wCnEEvqdMXenI%7EPBDk-fMUwIKnv4FqRxwQjQZxJ7vr3j9Ulhv8Rbjjt%7E1d18jcwSpyTV3HmWDNJFnBpadKokh%7Ef%7EM5HKjZDu0trg-xGHVSzp4GGqWzxXq6Dl0MN8seuYBwk%7Ek8UJYfnEgUhT94ZM6HCF7QMzCT9P8H8TaKqj-EPFLl3GoxUqTCoST29klO0VltVn8xOUNY3-dpxaoRg%7E6GKURfjLHlhXKtA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM bc5e106373e0a4f88ac99c9a5124cb59 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - JASON MCFARLAND Interviewee: JASON MCFARLAND Interviewer: RILEY FRANK, ANTHONY KNIFFIN, HUNTER PATRICK, JACKSON TAYLOR Interview Date: APRIL 20, 2017 Location: CHARLESTON, SC Length: 69 min. Sound person: But you guys are good to go. It's rolling and I'll make sure the other guys wander in here. We're waiting on Jackson and Kniffin, but come on up here to the mic. Yup. And if you want to adjust that up to the — All right, good to meet you. JASON MCFARLAND: Yes, sir. We'll be talking more. How you guys doing? JACKSON TAYLOR: We're doing all right. How about you? JM: I'm good. Where you guys from? JT: I'm from Cape Cod Massachusetts. JM: All right. That's not far from my home. Where are you from? AK: I'm from all the way in Houston Texas. JM: All right. Floods a lot there man. AK: Oh, yes. JM: What's going on with that? AK: A lot of random tornados come in and [00:00:48] too. JM: Yes. Houston's beautiful, though. It keeps — It's like it started here. Now they keep putting a highway around everything. It keeps expanding towards. Yes, I'm from the Bronx, New York. �Jason Mcfarland 2 JT: Oh, solid. Are you a Yankees fan? JM: I live right across from the stadium. I played stick ball right there in the street. JT: That's awesome. JM: In the seventies. JT: That's a little bit before our time. We are supposed to have two other guys come in, but should we just get started, I guess? All right. So, for the sake of the recording, can you just say your name, where you're from, so on and so forth? JM: My name is Jason McFarland. I'm originally born in New York City, Bronx, New York native. South Carolina resident from 1980. Lived in Awendaw, South Carolina for the first year and then Mount Pleasant from there on out. Lived in Folly Beach a couple times, but here and there, in college, but Mount Pleasant mostly. JT: Awesome. I'm kind of first in the kind of chronological order of things. I'm just going to ask you a little bit about your background, things like that. JM: Okay. JT: Do you have any siblings? JM: I have a sister and a half-brother. JT: Oh, awesome. I actually just got my own half-brother. JM: Okay, yes. JT: So, it's pretty cool. Are you close with either of them? JM: There's a big age disparity. My parents were older parents. When they had me, they had already had families previous, so my closest sibling is eleven years, so not really much in common. �Jason Mcfarland 3 JT: Definitely. So, growing up, though, when you were our age, I guess, you didn't have any like siblings or any close cousins or anything like that? JM: I guess, you're what, eighteen, nineteen? JT: Yes. I'm twenty-two, but yes. JM: Twenty-two. At age twenty-two, that's a good question. Twenty-two, I was actually being an electrician. I was learning trades. I was going to school for electrical engineering, so. Yes, I kind of dropped music for a little bit, from high school into like about age twenty and I started learning how to use oscilloscope and how to like do phasing of power and stuff like that. I wanted to learn what it all did. And then I also wanted to go into the field and do building of stuff. So at that age, they were starting to build town center in Mount Pleasant. So, from ground breaking there and running all the five hundred and the big main lines, all the way throughout the entire thing. I was there all the way to the completion of the movie theater. So, two years there while doing school also. JT: Okay. Now, obviously, we're interested a lot in the music. When was your well, what was your first instrument, I guess? JM: Pots and pans. That's most drummers' first instrument. Another cool instrument was a recliner. I took a pencil. I just liked the noise sound of it poking into the chair. That's what my mom told me. So, the sound sounded like a snare drum, so I was hitting it every time the snare would hit on the radio. So, I destroyed her chair. That was my first snare drum. But yes, playing my first drum set and sitting down was four years old. I couldn't reach anything, but I could play it. And that's when they knew just let him do his thing. So yes, I started real early. �Jason Mcfarland 4 JT: Definitely. What's your first musical memory in terms of hearing an artist or something like that? JM: It was probably the South Bronx. There is an area in the Bronx across from a place called Joyce Kilmer Park, and they have a courthouse and they have these steps and it's like a huge area and they'd have bands there every Saturday. And like, when I say bands, it was like bands from that time. So you'd have bands like Chic or like Talking Heads. Bands like that that were growing up that time in New York were coming and playing there on the weekends. So that's the kind of music you had. And I also had a cousin that was a sound engineer at the Apollo Theater. He did sound and lighting. So, I got to see like the Jackson Five when I was a kid. I got to see James Brown. So, I got to see a lot of that like age six and under. JT: That's awesome. So, you grew up in the Bronx, right? JM: Yes. JT: I mean aside from moving here, did you ever move around at all? JM: Not really. Just in the area here and I always lived In New York and here, back and forth, so. JT: Okay, Yes. I've been to New York once or twice. It's a fun place. How long have you been in Charleston? JM: I got here in 1980 and Charleston back then it was a navy town. There was no tourism industry. There was maybe two horses carrying people around downtown. You could get from Mount Pleasant to Kiawah in probably twenty-five minutes, thirty minutes. Yes, there was no traffic. JT: That's not happening today. �Jason Mcfarland 5 JM: No. There was a water park in Mount Pleasant. Like where my house is built now, next it and the neighborhood I'm in. It has like a hundred something homes now. When I got there, we were the house and it was all forest. And this is right by like Sullivan’s Island, Ben Sawyer, right in that area where that gas station is, that was all forest. Where that guy has that crazy stuff outside around that area, that was a bus stop. Yes, so it was a completely changed world back then. There was nothing around. 526 didn’t exist. Isla of Palms Connector didn't exist, James Island Connector didn't exist. It — just the main roads you see as 17 and 61. That was it. JT: That's like crazy to think about. JM: And the music at the time was Toto, like the Ramones, like the band The Police. Those were the big bands that were the early 80s, like at that time. JT: Wow. That's crazy. So, what sort of music do you remember listening to as you grew up. JM: Being in the Bronx, it was a lot different. Like, on a southern end, I had my Grandmother on Awendaw so that was all gospel. Gospel or funk or whatever was coming out at the time in the seventies and sixties. In New York, it was all Latin-based. It was pretty much the birth years of what we know now as hip hop in the Bronx was starting. Like all the b-boy and break dancing crews were right there in my neighborhood. These kids were like fifteen to eighteen to twenty years old. But those kids also doubled as graffiti writers. They were the guys painting on trains, too, so they were starting more than one movement all at once. Like in our neighborhood, we had Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, and Afrika Bambaataa. Those were the big three DJs at the time in the seventies. They were the first guys to start hip hop. They were the guys playing the music �Jason Mcfarland 6 in the parks. They'd climb up the pole, steal the power, had parties all night. That's the music there. Down here, it was a lot different. Like I said, it was all blues or all church. JT: Yes, definitely, definitely. So, you've just been New York and Charleston? JM: Yes. I've been out west, but I haven't lived out west. I've stayed for periods of time and played music out there. I've toured with bands and I've been through the whole country a few times, but mainly New York and here, yes. Miami a little bit too. JT: Yes. Where out west have you been? JM: LA. San Fran. I stayed in Arizona for a little bit. It's all different. Even though it's all desert, each desert's different. Like, it's hilly and like coastline in California and it's kind of like gets flat in the mountainous. In Arizona, it's all hilly and you've got these big peaks of rock that are sticking up in the air and then cracks in the earth, where you look down into. It's just all different. JT: Definitely. So, you've kind of started out with, on the drums and just sort of went with it? JM: I started drums. It's funny, I started drums. Living here in South Carolina, you know it's like odd first off. When I first went to Catholic school here from New York, my grandfather made sure I was baptized Catholic in Mount Vernon. I came here. My parents put me in Catholic school. Here's the thing about the South. I was the first black kid in the whole Catholic school. And that was 1980. I was the kid that could dance, could do all the stuff. I was the weird kid because I wasn't from here. So, played instruments, but you didn't get assigned instruments until middle school in the South, so. Could outplay all the drummers. They wouldn't put, let me play drums. They already had drummers and parents were bitching because, sorry, I had to use that word, but they were �Jason Mcfarland 7 mad that their kids were getting outplayed and they wanted their kids to be on the drums, so I went and played trumpet. So, I played trumpet and the band leader, who was Clark Ballard. That was seventh grade and he decided, you know what? These parents are giving me hell about you being in the drum line, you're good at trumpet. I’m going to let you lead the whole band. He just made me the drum major and that was it. And, at the same time, what he did was, the Wando High School band back then, they would reach out to the schools and go do like performances for the kids and I played along with them. So, he started sending me in middle school to High School to play with them because I was already on a twelfth grade level in seventh grade. But they wouldn't let me play drums in school, so. Still got to Wando, still wouldn't let me play drums, so I marched for three years playing during the stands in the game, I played drums. On the field, I played my trumpet. They wouldn't let me be on the drum line. Senior year, Basil Kerr, the band leader at Wando, allows me to join the drum line, finally, and be one of the leaders. My senior year, I'm like whatever. So, I did it. We did all that. Got placed the highest Wando had a placed in anything in history and so, it was fun, you know? Got to experience both sides. Then, got out of school and I wanted to learn how to cook. Dropped the drums and everything for about three years. JT: Awesome. Sounds like you've got a bunch of different things. JM: Yes, you got to. JT: Yes, definitely. So, let's see, so drums, trumpet, anything else? JM: I dabble on piano. I can play along with you, like if you give me the bass and I need to fill in. If we're playing stuff that's already written? JT: Yes. �Jason Mcfarland 8 JM: I don't like creating for other people. I do write. I do like with the bands I'm with but I don't like to create for other people and give stuff away. And I don't like playing cover songs. So, yes. JT: All right. What do you guys want to do? AK: Oh, I can jump in. So, I guess my questions are going to be more focused like, towards, like, your career and how it's evolved through the years. I was looking up some stuff online last night. I saw that when you play with Funny Looking Kids. JM: Funny Looking Kids AK: And it said on there that you started like in your bedroom of like a bet. JM: Yes, and you know where that bedroom is, funny enough? It's 7 Bee Street, over by MUSC. Me and two kids I grew up with in Mount Pleasant. It was their, I guess, first or second year in college. It was my last year. I really didn't care. They're like, we need a roommate. We want to live outside of our house and I was like, fine just so you guys can get out of your house and live in an apartment your freshman year. I decided to rent and it had this huge bedroom. Like, the bedroom's a little bigger than this room. So, I had a king size bed in there and a drum kit in the corner. Yes, I had a friend of mine in another band locally and it was all a bet about playing at the Music Farm. JM: Like, that was the thing back then. Like, that was the biggest club in town. You wanted to either open up for someone big or like get to headline the club. And yes, it was like how much time will it take for you to get there if you even can. I said, I'll be there in six months. It took about four. So, it was just all about determination, knowing the right people, studying the industry. And back then, when I mean studying the industry, there was no internet. You had to go look up these magazines and find out what �Jason Mcfarland 9 clubs were the big ones, what bands were headlining these clubs, what days their guy was even there to take your phone call for booking. There was no email and all that back then. You had to luckily catch someone on the phone. So, it was a lot different. It was a lot harder. These kids have it made now for booking and information. Like, I can text you right now and you can answer me whenever, but you already have that information. Back then, you left someone a message. He might not be in the club until they have another show. Like, you see how the Music Farm has no shows for three or four days. Imagine back then, you're trying to book something and do a tour for a month with thirty different venues, but you got to wait three days for this guy to get back to you. So yes, like making a bet and doing something in four months’ time and opening up for someone big is pretty. And writing those songs that have people pay attention to you that much in a three months’ time span, is kind of crazy. Yes, I still can't believe it. AK: What would you say is like your most memorable event that you played at in your career, like good or bad? JM: Well, I have to give it to the man, Fishbone. They're been around forever. They've been known forever. They have history in the world that's amazingly funny and crazy. They're a LA band. They're seven black dudes that play ska and punk. They're like best friends with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As a matter of fact, Anthony Kiedis, at one time had to put his house up to get one of the members out of jail of Fishbone. Like, Fishbone is a well-respected band in the world and being able to open up for them is like—like imagine whatever job you want to do and you get to meet the guy that motivated you to get there, and you get to have them every day what to change, how to get better, and show you the directions. Like, “this is how we went to Europe, this is how �Jason Mcfarland 10 you need to tour in Europe, this is how they're going to treat you in Europe. You look different than everybody in Europe.” So, they gave you an insight, even though I had three white dudes in my band, they were teaching me, “this is how you take care of these three assholes, because this is your life”. And that's what it was. And that's the biggest memory in my music is through Fishbone, just learning from them. AK: They're kind of like your band's mentor I guess you would say? JM: Pretty much, yes, especially for me. Yes. Besides them, Bad Brains is the only other one. AK: Would you say that they were like the most influencing artists for you in your career? JM: Influencing artists Bad Brains. Yes. Fishbone was good because they were touring at the time and they helped us and they were veterans of the industry. But, being a kid, listening to Black Flag and Bad Brains was—the punk rock side—and the Descendents. They were just bands that have been around since the seventies and 80s and Henry Rollins is still around. He was in, you know, like, these guys are. They're now being like honored by like Vans is making a shoe for them and, you know bands that people still don't know about, but they're popular in that movement. AK: What would you say is like your favorite like punk or metal artist as of right now? JM: Right now? AK: You're like top favorite one? JM: Man, let me think. Right now. I'll go ahead and give it up to Matt Skiba because he's riding around with Blink-182 right now. He just joined them. He's Alkaline �Jason Mcfarland 11 Trio. I met him through another local musician from Chicago and here, Johnny Puke, who played in a band called Cletus, another band that gave us a start in the beginning. Yes, I'd say Blink-182 because they're going to fill arenas every single time when they go out, regardless of what they do. They're the ones that everyone refers to now as what is punk. You know, besides Green Day. Green Day goes up and down, they fluctuate. They're more of a pop genre band now. But, you're not going to stop Green Day, but. But, when they say in punk, it's like Avenged Sevenfold's more punk than like. There's bands that are like Rancid's a punk band. They're still around. It just depends on, you know. And System of a Down can't be stopped. That's another band, so those are the ones that are tops right now. AK: So, what would you say is like your highest and your lowest moments in your career so far? JM: I don't know, highest moment I kind of took the drumming into sound engineering also, so I've worked for pretty much being an instrument tech and a sound engineer. I've literally worked for everyone in popular music from the fifties to present day. I've done sound for BB King, I've worked with Lauryn Hill, I've worked with The Roots, I worked with Gary Clark Junior. He's from Austin, Texas. I've seen Dr. John, Bruce Hornsby. It's like, just every act you can imagine. Even stuff your parents' have listened to, I've worked with them. I've seen Nirvana live, so it's like, things that people don't ever get to do. You know, it was like, I saw Dave Grohl as a drummer and they sounded horrible, but they were having fun and they were selling millions of records. It was the 90s. You know, it was a different time. I saw Alice in Chains live with Lane Staley. So, yes, it was like a different era back then. Everyone was like musicians, they �Jason Mcfarland 12 were like looked up to. Now, everyone's kind of a musician if you got a computer. And the lows, the low points are only the weird things. Like, my lows are odd. It's not like a bad thing. It's not like I've lost my house and my wife took everything and all that kind of stuff. I own my home, I'm good. The lows in our industry for me is just like, it's not even what other people would compare to. Like nowadays, my lows are like weather. So, the concert's not going to happen. You know, so it's not going to get rescheduled or it's now moved to another year or. We had Lauryn Hill, New Year's Eve. The soundboard, a thousand dollar soundboard got rained into. They had to go to Atlanta, get another one. So, it had to be a five-hour turnaround, like it wasn't even a low. It was just, we're waiting. The show's not starting until it gets here. So, I haven't really hit the lows. I own seven drum kits. I work for a great, you got to actually kind of diversify yourself in the music. Guys, I feel sorry for guys that just play that instrument and that's all. You've got to learn how to engineer. You got to learn to do other things around it. At least if you can help someone else up, they'll pay you. If you're just playing and waiting on the next gig and that's all you do, you're not really that versed in your own field. I mean, even guys that sell boats are like, hey, these guys over here need extra masts. Okay, cool, we sell boats and we're going to sell them all their extra masts, so they're getting business on the side of their business. That's how music has to be. Should be with anything. AK: What would you say is like your favorite thing about being a drummer or even more specifically like the punk or metal drummer? JM: In punk rock, for me, I got that speed from gospel because gospel, it's start out (makes music) And then, you know (makes music) This is the way you keep it in control. People can play fast, but they sound sloppy. For me, it was all about technical �Jason Mcfarland 13 ability. That's where being on the drum line came in, gave me an advantage. Like with Travis Barker with Blink-182, his playing is clean as hell because he learned rudiments. He practiced in marching band. So, it's about cleanliness for him. And there's drummers like Byron McMackin of Pennywise, he's clean, he's fast as hell. Smelly from NOFX, he's clean, he's fast as hell. And then there's Bill Stevenson from the Descendents and Black Flag, he's clean, fast as hell. These guys are veteran drummers. Dave Raun, one of my personal best friends from Lagwagon and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, fast as hell. These guys trained like—I watched Dave go to Muay Thai, just to work out, just to be a drummer. Like, you got to train your body to do it. At my house, I've got a heavy bag in my backyard just to keep my speed up, just for hands. It's a job and you got to take it seriously. And not only do you have to be able to play well, you got to be smart enough to tune well. You can't have a drum kit sound like a Muppet drum set. It has to like have uniformity. It has to sound right. You're the undertone of what's going on. Punk rock can sound like a sloppy mess coming at you or it can be a fast clean sound. And that's what those guys all do. And that's what I try to carry on and continue. AK: Could you just describe like what all you do as like a sound engineer? JM: All right. Same thing you guys do here. You walk in, depending on the artist, I might be the worst artist you have. Some days you have good artists. Some days you have bad artists. You're like, we got to deal with this dude. So, with me, like this, I'm here with a microphone. That means I'm an acoustic act and I'm singing right to you. Or you can come in there and you can have George Clinton and Parliment Funkadelic and have to use every input on your soundboard and have another soundboard for extra inputs. Not only that, you might have to dub a couple voices. Like, how many microphones do you �Jason Mcfarland 14 need? How many DI boxes do you need? How much space are they going to be taking up? How many artists are going to be coming on stage? Are they playing an acoustic? What songs are they doing it on? Like, because sometimes you just leave stuff muted most of the show until they walk up, pick up that instrument. Then you unmute it. It depends on the artist. I you're paying attention, like more to them, like, some of the bands I've been out with, like around town, are like three piece bands where I'm only focusing on driving a little bit during the solos to bring them up where they need to be. Or when the vocals need something or like there's something in their album that has reverb and I have to slide the reverb in so it happens in the house. It's all a part of the whole day. Like, for me, it starts out loading the instruments in, getting everything set up and where it goes, then micro-phoning everything, then getting someone to sit on everything so I can get that sound into where that person's going to be at so they have it. They hear what they want during the concert, during the performance. So it's a lot of building throughout the morning and day. And it's then, at that point, that's where the electrical came in, it's knowing frequencies. You got to know what each instrument should sound like coming through that microphone. And some guys who like, I'm not going to give you any industry secrets, but you got to start out with what things sound like and then you adjust it to level it with everything. Some guys go in there and they give everything a level and then they build to it. I'm like, well, how are you going to know how that sounds during the show while your faders are sitting at on point all ready? You can't switch how it sounds like the emotion of it, you can only fix the volume of it now. If you leave it at an area, if some frequency doesn't sound right, you can still fix what I call the emotion of that sound to �Jason Mcfarland 15 clean it up later up. If you already pre-jack it up, you're not going to have anywhere to move with it except give it feedback during the performance because you've got no room to work with. It's all depending who you are and how you start in the day. I've seen engineers who are considered the greatest sound like shit and then I've seen guys that are just learning just luckily get it. And now in the day and age with digital soundboards, it's like, these kids don't know frequencies, you're going to get a flat show, which means they got everything set at zero and they hope everything that's being played out sounds good and they'll just bring it to a level sound. They're not giving it any boost or kick in the frequency it needs. So, it depends on what you know. AK: What's like your touring experience been like with your bands? JM: With our band? The first thing you always hope doesn't happen is getting your van broken into, but it will happen eventually. It happens to every band, so just get that one out of the way. Like, something you love is going to get stolen. It happened to us in my hometown in New York. And it's funny, too, because my guitarist, Clint, he had this weird lumberjack pillow, like this plaid pillow and we were all cracking up on this pillow. And they got a couple guitars. They didn't get the bass. They got no amps. They got a few like, little like, things, maybe a little recorder and they got that pillow. And we were glad. The pillow was gone. Ten minutes later, we walk around the corner. What's on the ground in front of us? That damn pillow. So they got the pillow, they dropped, left it around the corner from the ban. But we were luckily on a record label at the time, which was also in New York City. I made a phone call, they cut a check for guitars and everything. We went, everyone got new guitars. We were good. That's why I say I never have really bad stories, �Jason Mcfarland 16 because I've kind of mapped this out for us so we didn't have a lot of failures. Like, even the van we were in was paid for by the record label, so it was like, yes, it was all steps taken from me studying during those non-internet days, reading these punk rock zines just learning how to. This is how you do DIY tours, this is how you do this. Call up a city and see if these kids can have a hundred people at their house party on a Friday night. All of them put in five bucks. That pays your way to the next town. They might buy shirts and CDs. That's how it was back then. Yes, that's one touring experience. That's it. I mean, there's a new story every day. I mean, we went to VFW. I mean, and this, all the military guys, they love it. They had the urinals. They had the [00:28:16] stickers in the urinals. That was their thing, you know? So, yes, it was like, just different places you played. Like CBGBs, a legendary club in New York is now gone. Played at the Stone Pony, where like Bruce Springsteen used to start. You know, like, you play these different venues and you want to get in and then you get there and you're like, this place is a shithole. It's like small and smoky, you know, the speakers are torn up. You’re like, you hear about it, you're like I want to be there and you get there and you're like, all right, whatever. You know, it holds a hundred people, but that's where everybody used to go. Like CBGBs, everybody went to see Blondie there, B-52, Lou Reed. You want to play someplace like that. You know, and now it's gone, so. It's now a John Varvatos clothing store. So that's another thing about music and history, things that were big back then are now gone, so. AK: What would be like your top venue to play at, whether it would be like still here or not anymore? �Jason Mcfarland 17 JM: All right, for Charleston, I'm going to do this one for this town and I wish that this venue was still here, King Street Palace. King Street Palace is now across from what is now known as Rodney Scott, the new barbeque place. All right, across from there is a big building called the King Street Palace. They've now turned it into a low-income housing. That building should have been preserved by someone in the city of Charleston because that venue used to hold people like Chuck Berry, like it was the venue. And the James Brown and the Review, like all those bands used to play in that venue. I mean, up until the nineties, I even went to see a band, like called like Live there, 311 played there. It was open up until the 90s and then they changed it over and turned it into a housing when they should have preserved it as a theater for the city and they didn't. So that's the one place that I wish I could have played at that no one will ever get a chance to play it again. JT: I was just going to ask some questions about like how you think punk rock has changed in Charleston and the country over the years? JM: It's gotten softer. I don't want to hear about your girlfriend problems. You know, we had a band for that back then. Now, every band does it. Like I said, I respect Bink-182, but how many times do we have to hear about the same chick. It's like, that's just how I feel. See, punk rock started not because you're heartbroken. Punk rock started from struggle, like most good big movement. Like, in the 80s, when these bands were around and—Bad Religion, Social Distortion—just the names alone let you know that they weren't here to mess with you and they were going to tell you how they felt. They had a point to get across. They might have been the kids that grew up in the affluent neighborhood, but their parents actually worked to get there, unlike the other people. So �Jason Mcfarland 18 in the 80s, it was like, imagine going to school and yes, your parents might have money, but they're not like that kid who doesn't have to do anything type deal. And it's the same as now, but the music's not the same. There's no struggle in it anymore. Everyone wants to be pop. It has to come from somewhere. It's lacking substance. It doesn't have a message really. Like, I mean, Green Day has done some songs, like “American Idiot”. They've done things in this era to kind of show that punk rock has that still edge of it's still not all about the government. We still are the ones that pay your salaries, like you're not doing anything for the people, and that's not what's in punk rock anymore—a lot of it. Thank God, I do play in two bands that do that, Funny Looking Kids and Hybrid Mutants. Like in Hybrid Mutants, Herman just goes on whatever he feels. He's been doing it since the 80s. It's his thing. It's his movement. And people pay attention to it because it's coming across, it's in your face. You have no choice. That's what punk rock is. It's the same thing with artificial warfare. It's like, we're going to get our point across whether you like it or not. That's what punk rock is. JT: So, do you think there's a difference with Charleston punk rock if there is such a thing? Does Charleston have like a punk rock? JM: Like a scene? JT: A scene or like a style compared to JM: Not really, because they're all so different. Like, even like I'm thinking of the bands like the two that I'm in and I'm thinking about like Cletus. Cletus, Johnny's in a band at Chicago. He's from Chicago. His sound's based on that garage band, like fast forward and melodic singing over the top of it, not like a more screaming or anything like that. And then another local punk band, there's a band called Flaming Anus. You know, �Jason Mcfarland 19 and these guys are like Confederate punks and I booked them on every show we had because I just liked what they did. You know, it wasn't about what they believed in. They were playing punk rock. I didn't care what their thought process or how they got to where they're going. They were playing and they had fans and it's like why stop them? You know, they're weren't promoting violence against anybody, they just had a belief in what they believe in and I'm not going to stop them from that. That's another thing about punk rock. It's like, don't judge what they're doing, listen to the message. JT: So, could you say, like you said earlier with being from the south, like your influences were gospel and then in the Bronx, there were different influences. Do you hear those differences in punk rock, as well? I guess that kind of is like the previous question, but. JM: Yes, for, well, like, punk rock around here? A lot of the guys listen to the old like gutter punk, like that's the kind of stuff they're into, like just straight up four cord, you know. Some guys can sing, some guys can't, and you know, but it's like it's just, it's different. One band I'm in is like we kind of have like ska and punk kind of mixed in and some guys play just like the Ramones kind punk, like the straight forward — 1,2,3,4. Stop, like that. Then there are guys that are writing these like melodic riffs and stuff and trying to be dueling guitars. Yes, the punk rock scene is a lot different now. Back in the day, there was a band called Mother Fist and their crowd was more metal. They weren't even really punk, you know. It's like, but they were just in that hard core edge of bands. The thing, too, is that people didn't have a way to dress. We weren't grunge, we weren't like west coast or nothing. It was like everyone used to call Clint in our band like the Vietnam vet because he always had on this military coat and playing �Jason Mcfarland 20 guitar. Like, he looked homeless. He had long stringy hair and a huge ass beard. He was playing punk rock. He did not like he should have been in the band. It was just like. Yes, so, but he was playing punk. It was like, it was straight forward punk. It was like, and that's what people like, man you all are a punk band or a real one and I was like. And that's what. We just kept doing it because of that reason. First record we recorded, we did in one take, thirty-five minutes. Do you all do anything ever? No, that's it. You think you don't want to change, you don't want to slow anything? No, that's it. Next record. That's gone. That don't happen anymore. So, yes, kids now try to be polished. They're still not that good. Like, you've got to actually be good first. And here's another one. I'll go back to a Fishbone tip. Here's what Fishbone always told me. It's like, when people refer to you, you want to hear them say this, like, how good are they? Tight as a mosquito's asshole. That's how good they are, so that's where punk rock is. That's where it needs to get back to. Just like a focus, like a message. JT: I guess this one, not really related to my things, but King Street Palace was your favorite place to play, or that you wish you could JM: Would have been. JT: Have played out here. Is there anywhere elsewhere that or favorite place or favorite city across the country that you enjoy more than most? JM: If it were anything now, I mean, being in a punk band and seeing how things are. I wouldn't mind doing again, maybe Warped Tour, but like if they did Warped Tour more based on how it first started out. When Warped Tour started, it was Sublime, it was 311, it was the Funk Junkies, it was Voodoo Glow Skulls. It was real punk bands. It wasn't like ten hip hop acts and this chick singing over a tape and like, this new. It was �Jason Mcfarland 21 skating still, it was still biking, but it was stripped down and it was just punk rock. It was like, you got to see Pennywise, everyone on the same, like, day. If it were like that again, I'd like to do Warped Tour at, in any venue, in any setting, because Kevin Lyman, the guy that run it. He's the only one that has ran a successful in this entire country in the last thirty years. When Jane's Addiction and Perry Farrell started Lollapalooza, it was a good idea. It was a good concept, but the bands they were trying to book were way too large for the budget to keep that tour going every year. It's like, you can't have Beastie Boys and another large act and this other large act every year. Like, that's a lot of money to pay out to do a festival across. That's why they only do it in Chicago now for four days. But Warped Tour is not going to stop, because punk bands don't really expect to be like rich at one show. They do it over a period of time. So, yes, Warped Tour and more punk. If they could just make that more punk rock. JT: That's all I got. You all got? Yes, I just had some general questions I guess more about Charleston? You said you moved here in the 80s and really saw the city grow from sounds like bare bones up to what it is today. JM: Oh, yes. You know where Five Guys Burgers is? That was a place called King Street Station. It had bands. It had a laundromat right across the street that had video games and beer at the laundromat. And it all was open twenty-four hours, now. Remember this, bands didn't start until like two in the morning. You all don't even know what Charleston used to be like. It was amazing. Yes, right there just on that end of the street, it was King Street Station and then like where La Ha's just closed used to be. My �Jason Mcfarland 22 friend, Leno Doriano, I think he might still own the building, but he rented it out to them. He had a bar in the back that was just now Burn's Alley. He kind of split that building into two. It was the pizza place up front, bar in the back. And that place was open until three, four in the morning. Right across the street, I worked at little Dino's Deli and Grill at three-fifty King, which is now some Asian little place and Kickin' Chicken actually moved into there from my boss, Nate Ross, he does the air announcing for the games, actually, on television. He owned that restaurant. He sold the Kickin' Chicken their first restaurant on King's Street before they moved across the street. But, Horse and Cart was the place that we played at first in this whole town. It was a little bar across the street. As a matter of fact, if you go to local 616, Dwayne and Vicki, they used to work at Horse and Cart. And also the Upper Deck, those employees, used to be employees at the Horse and Cart. Ken Newman was the owner. And in the back, they had this little room about this size and the band would set up over there and it'd be like forty kids in a circle moshing while you're playing. And then they're like, you got to move this out back to the patio and I was like, okay. Now, there's a hundred and fifty kids, moshing in a circle. But, yes, it was called Horse and Cart. And that was early Charleston in 90s. The only reasons that actually started happening was because of a guy named Clay Scales. He had a record store that was a ska based record store called Fifty-Two-Point-Five, he got the name because it was 52.5 Wentworth Street and it was a record shop. And I went in there and kind of met Clay, bald head, skinny guy with glasses, drove the coolest Vespa scooter with the windshield and, because that's the ska movement, the scooter, that's the British thing. You know, he was all in that movement, but he had the only record store downtown before �Jason Mcfarland 23 Millennium Music opened. Where the Walgreens is, or whatever it is, they used to be a record shop. JT: Yes, that closed down like I think our freshman year, for the seniors now, and they had like a blow-out sale. It was kind of sad to see it go. JM: Yes, and the bar above it, that used to be like two thousand people every night. It was insane. Yes, Charleston's way different. Music Farm wasn't at the place it is now. It used to be on East Bay Street. You know where the Beer Garden is? You know where that new building is across the street, well, right in the little parking lot next to that was the Music Farm. It may be held three hundred, four hundred people, and I was in I think my junior year in high school when I went there for the first time and I saw Rage Against the Machine, who no one knew who the hell they were yet. And Rocket from the Crypt. That was the two bands that were playing that night. And yes, it was Rage's first album and they just came out and played in front of three hundred people. No one knew who the hell they were. That was early Charleston. Then there was another place called Acme. Acme is over by, you know where slightly north of Broad is, on that little alley? Yes, it was in that alley, in that building. That was called Acme. The Ramones played there, Bad Brains played there. This was 80s, 90s, Charleston. Like, those bands actually came through and played little places like that. JT: Do you think like the growth of like tourism in Charleston kind of like saw some of these little places kind of get changed out for restaurants or something like that, because you think of slightly north of Broad, you don't sit there and say like oh, the Ramones. JM: I knew the owners. I knew the owners. Here's the thing about Charleston. �Jason Mcfarland 24 Like, on Cumberland Street, there was Cummin, that building's still empty. You probably don't even know there was a club there. It's just painted white now and it's empty. It's been empty since Cummins moved out of there onto King Street. Cumberlands was one of the greatest little underground clubs. It had like mystery beers. They had a thing full of beers. It was a dollar. You just say give me a dollar beer and they would give you whatever was in this thing. You could get a Mickey's. You could get a Budweiser. It didn't matter. It was all in this thing. Until it was empty and it took about until like eight or nine at night from Happy Hour, people just buying dollar beers. People would get trashed. But, remember bars were open twenty-four hours a day. There were no cops on every corner. There was no valet rope to get into anything. I could leave a bar on east Bay Street, go all the way up to King. AC's used to be on the other side. AC's is now way down here. You could go into AC's and see about ten people you know. It's like, yes, we start playing in about an hour and that'd be twelve o'clock at night. And there was a place all the way on Huger Street called the Beam Warehouse this band called Beam owned a warehouse that’s now Taco Boy. So, there were stuff everywhere. And like people were like, oh, people are scared to go outside of town. It's like, musicians weren't scared to go anywhere. We roamed wherever we wanted because we knew everybody on every side of town. It was a different place. Like a band called the Secrets, they played on Rutledge Avenue and it was a dive, but it was their bar and they played on Thursday nights and it was packed with all college kids. Charleston's music scene has changed a lot. I don't blame it on the growth. It's just the same with New York. It's like, if CBGBs wanted to be there, they'd be there. NYU tried to buy out CBGBs and the city wouldn't let them. So, it �Jason Mcfarland 25 would have been a preserved place. Same with Cumberlands and it's like I watch these business owners go through things that they changed personally, so things change hands and they fell apart. The only club that's still around is the Music Farm because it's a venue of that size. It used to hold twelve hundred people. I was packed in that place like sardines at some shows, man. It was like, the capacity's now only eight hundred. New fire marshal’s brought it back down to like normalcy where you can walk around during sold out shows. Back in the day, a sold out show, you were sliding and skidding across people to get through. One show there, the NOFX show, they tore the urinals all off the walls. Like, at the end of the show, there was water just pouring into the building. So, I've seen some crazy shows in there too. I saw Rancid, Tim Armstrong throw his guitar against the wall over his guitar tech's head and smash it and the guy picked it up and goes, just hand it to me. I've got to have it working by tomorrow. That's punk rock, you know? Yes, and that's all happening here in Charleston. It's like yeah. Charleston, like the Pour House. Alex. Alex's first bar, the Pour House on Highway 17 it's a place called Hunley's. Alex had that. It was so tiny. I played in that with a band called L Brown Odyssey, a whole other band I was in. And Alex moved that from there over to James Island hasn't stopped since, so he got the right idea. He was like I'm going to book more than what everyone else is booking downtown. I'm going to get every kid that knows every obscure band to start coming to my club. And that's what he did. And there was another guy that did it in Mount Pleasant Trey Lofton, a kid I went to high school with, and he had a place over there called the Village Tavern. That place had, like, I saw, what's those kids' names from Tennessee? I can't think �Jason Mcfarland 26 of their names right now, but he had like bands that were now getting big and that are big. He was booking them before anyone knew them. Like, bands like the Killers and like, when they were first on their first tour and no one knew them, he was getting all these college buzz ands and the place only held like a hundred people. And, yes. And he also booked for the New Brooklyn Tavern in Columbia. So, yes, you kind of meet people like that along the way that move on and still do things. Yes, there's a lot of clubs that are gone, man, that were in Charleston. You'd be shocked. There was something to do almost every day of the week, always. JT: Do you have like a performance you can remember going to in Charleston with like all these different places that you were just like, that was like the best one that you saw? JM: I'm going to take you to the 80s. The old Gaillard Auditorium. I saw, it was Run-DMC, the Fat Boys. It was like hip hop when it first, it was the birth. It was like 1984. Like, it was everything that was first out. It was Curtis Blow, it was Houdini. It was before even the west coast knew that rap was going to be big because Ice T didn't come out until 85. Like, these guys were already touring and doing like Fresh Fest was the name of the tour back them. Yes, King Street. Go on the Gaillard Auditorium, like seeing an actual real New York hip hop show in the south in the 80s was pretty crazy. Something you didn't expect either, because me living there was like all the things I love was not here anymore and they were like holy shit, a show's coming. So, it's like yes, we're going. It was fun. It was fun seeing something that not fit in here fit in. JT: Absolutely. Kind of on that thought, too, I did my term paper on when Two Live Crew tried to come play in Charleston. Do you remember like all the controversy? �Jason Mcfarland 27 JM: Oh, I knew Luther Campbell actually very well. JT: Oh really. He went by Luke Skywalker, right? Yes, okay. It just seemed like it got blown way out of proportion in Charleston. Like, they were issuing tickets if you were playing some of their songs in the car too loud or something like that? JM: It did. Oh man. You really want to get into the real history, now. All right. Let me explain something funny. Back in the day, The Battery, you know where the water is and everyone's out there cute, holding hands and there are tourists. Back in the day on Sundays, it used to look like little Africa. It was all black people. It was cookouts. Everybody was hanging out, riding motorcycles. Everyone came through, and everyone knew each other and it was like literally from like ten a.m. to like eight at night, a party on the Battery. Every weekend. And they only put in those ordinances because new homeowners started buying in that area so they wanted it to quiet down. So, yes, that was during that time. And no Two Live Crew man, he was like banned from the state a few years ago on some lewd act thing he did, but he still performing. JT: Yes, they had something where they kept trying to play in Charleston and they ended up did play at King Street Palace, but there weren't like allowed to use the state automated ticketing machine and stuff like that and they were like that's fine because we're going to sell most of our tickets at the door and it was interesting. We got to talk to Mayor Riley about the whole thing and — JM: What was his take? JT: He was, well, it was kind of interesting because he said—I don't need to hear those songs, I read the back of the album and I read the like titles, and that's all I needed to know. And I was all oh, I see. �Jason Mcfarland 28 JM: Come on Joe. He grew up on Isle of Palms. He knows better than that. Joe went here, didn't he? Yes. No, I knew people that grew up with him, oddly enough. They say he was a very strange kid. Because I pressure washed this lady's house. Her name's Phylla Shaffer. She grew up with him. She was eighty-two at the time when I, she was like, yes, I know Joe. She was like, they just called him the lifetime Mayor. That's what he was. You know? Yes, he disagreed with a lot of the things that the youth liked, like even the market back in the day, man. The market on the weekends would be four, five thousand high school kids from all the high schools in the entire city. We used to just hang out down there. It was insane. Because there was dance clubs all around. There was the Tree House on King Street, another place called the Warehouse, a place in the middle of the College of Charleston campus. There was a little nightclub there called the Arcade. There was clubs everywhere, so people had places just to split off and come right back. And the best all night eating place was called Fanny's. It was next to the Charleston Place Hotel on Market Street. It's now a different name now, but that place was open 24/7. And from twelve at night until six in the morning, you'd see everybody you knew in that restaurant. JT: So, would you consider these times like the late 80s, early 90s, like the heyday of the Charleston music scene? Or is it just a different music scene now? JM: I'd say the best time was right as like literally, I'll go ahead and put Darius in this. When Hootie started playing King Street Station, because it was like, for them, then, they were a Columbia band. Darius was from Charleston, so people would show up and the guy, remember this was only three hundred people back then showing up to see them, whereas now they can sell out an arena. But they'd play two or three days in a row, then �Jason Mcfarland 29 hang out, you'd see them everywhere. They were just kids. They were right there in the scene. They knew everybody, too. And Columbia, Rockafellas was the big club and it only held three hundred people. So, yes, it was like, you got big back then just because you packed the room. Like, hey they packed the room, I guess they can pack any room. That's how people got signed back in the day. Like, if you can get three hundred people to show up in South Carolina, you can get three hundred people to show up anywhere. So, that's kind of what they went on and yes. I'd say 90, 89, because a lot of reggae was back then too, man. Like, the reggae bands kind of got washed out, now they're only getting the MOJA Arts Festivals. It's like kind of sad, actually. It’s like, back then it was like Mystic Vibrations, just a ton of them. There was like six other bands that go along with just that one. You had Osei Chandler, those guys ran the reggae world around here. When you all talk to Quadro Cambpell, ask him, that's his people. He'll let you know. That's what was going on. They had the run of the mill. They had the sound set back in the day. In the 80s, the reggae guys ran the show, literally. Like, they had the loudest. You went to a nightclub, they was louder outside. They didn't care what show you had going on inside. They were set up outside. Oh, another place Francis Marion. There used to be a band shell there. You could play outside in that thing. If you pulled a permit, you could play out there. It was only ten bucks back then for an outdoor performance permit. Like, things have changed drastically, man. Yes, I'd say up and we quit playing in like 2000. So, I'd say 89 to 2003 there were a lot of bands. A lot of bands knew each other. JT: And a lot of places to play sounds like too. JM: Very. Yes, VFWs were open and welcome to shows back then. Whereas they �Jason Mcfarland 30 aren't anymore. You can't do that anymore now. Yes, VFWs. We used to have literal punk shows. People would bring all their own beer. People had forties and we cleaned up at the end. They don't do that now. Everyone just leaves their trash. So, we respected the place we were in, too, regardless of if it's a VFW. It was like, man, look, this is these veterans' home, this is where they come for their steak dinner on Tuesday. Clean up when you leave and we'd announce that on the mic as we were doing the shows. Yes, that's the only difference. You don't see these bands trying to go off and bring their own PA and do a show anymore. They want to go to a club that already is providing everything and they think advertising should be free or if the club knows someone in the papers. It's like, you got to build those rapports with people. They're not just going to hand you an interview or say, hey, your band's playing this weekend, because everybody's band is playing this weekend. You need to be friends with that person and say hey, when your week comes up, you do get premiered. Like, I didn’t' expect to join Hybrid Mutants and immediately be headlining shows again. This is just like my third show next week at the Music Farm, but I set that one up because Herman had never played there. I'm using my ticket to bring them in. You got to reach back, and that's why I've got bands opening up that no one knows, but people need to know them. That's what it's about. That's what we did back then. I'm bringing that back. We're going to be doing shows at that skate park. I'm going to be doing showcases. We're going to bring new bands again. We're going to do it again. I wasn't doing it for a while. I've been touring a lot, but now I got time. I'll help out again. You know? There's not bands like that. My guitarist, his brother-in-law is the drummer of Band of Horses. He isn't going to bring no bands around here and promote them. We got to do that. I don't care how big you get. If you don't reach back, you're just that person. �Jason Mcfarland 31 Interviewer 3: The guys might have asked this already, but tell them about your wildest show. JM: Which one? Interviewer 3: Your memory. What's your wildest memory from a show? JM: Which one? Interviewer 3: Give them one. JM: Another one? Interviewer 3: Did you already cover that? JM: I think we did. I don't know which one I gave them. There's a bunch. This is scary. I've been at one where a band I was about, I wasn't even joining a band. I was just there and the guy playing with the band called Go Baby Go, a kid named David Lee, a local guitarist/musician. They had a rockabilly band. I'm sitting there at the show and the drummer I guess notices his girlfriend is getting hit on at the bar. Middle of the song, this dumb-ass gets up, leaves his drum kit and he's at the bar, beating the crap out of this kid who was talking his girlfriend. They were on stage just waiting with their guitars in their hand. That also happened in Charleston, so you want a crazy Charleston yeah. I've seen that happen. What else? What's some more good ones? I don't want to talk about my family. I'll snitch on Sheryl Crow or something. Let me think. What’s another good one? Del the Funky Homosapien. Interviewer 3: What did Del do? JM: Del showed up with backpack and a scooter and he stands, maybe five foot three, so no one even know it was him. He had his hat on all low and he has this like little, I don't know what he was on that day, but I swear for the first song and a half, this �Jason Mcfarland 32 was his stance. The music was playing, but he just went yes. All right, now we're going to start. That was like two songs in. He just stood there while the DJ was playing. I've seen weirdness happen during shows while I was doing sound. You see a lot. Fifty Cent at House of Blues. I've seen him throw people off stage one hand. Nappy Roots, The Call to Charleston. They started talking trash to my man Andrew. We was running sound for the Nappy Roots. The Call to Charleston, paid for their PA. Okay, so if the Call for Charleston has a budget and they can't provide a certain sized PA, you know, you don't So the guy in Nappy Roots starts talking trash. Hey, you all, turn around and thank the sound man for bringing this tiny ass sound system out here and I went pup, muted. I grabbed the mic and I got on. I said, look, these kids, the Call to Charleston, used a budget. They had to book you and book whatever sized PA they had to use. If this is the way you're going to treat them and their budget, I don't think you should ever bring your asses back to Charleston. Everyone looking at me turned and looked at them and I unmuted his button. I didn't hear anything. All of a sudden, a crowd of two thousand went down to like twenty people. Don't ever talk trash about the people working for you. I can give you a lot of good industry stories. Yes, if you're in this, like I said, it could be a given day, depends on what day you're doing sound. You can have someone be completely left field or they can be just nice and let the day go by. It all depends. I got a million stories. I'm giving you the clean ones, the BG clean ones. There's a lot. JT: Did you have any stories like at these little performances or at these bars stuff like maybe Citadel Cadets, caused an issue or anything like that? JM: Never. That's the funny thing. It's never you guys. Ever. JT: You're describing some of these scenes and I'm like, gosh, I want to go. And I �Jason Mcfarland 33 can think of cadets in the 90s just, you know, causing a ruckus. JM: They came, but they were changed already. They changed clothes at the girl's house around the corner, but they didn't act out. And like the only Citadel kids I know of that got in any trouble was always at the Music Farm. And only because back then they had a meathead bouncer staff. They picked on everybody. It didn't matter who you were. And some guys that were in the Citadel got in trouble because they got in a fight at the club. You know, it's like, they didn't even know they were in the Citadel at the time. Yes, it's usually not the Citadel guys. Usually the guys back then, Charleston was very small, so if like you made a little bit of status. It's kind of like now, like the southern charm people, they think they should be able to walk into everything because people know their names. It was like that back then with the musicians, like, okay, there's Dave Marble from Motherfist, so let him in. There's so and so from this band, let him in. So, like, when the town started getting bigger and they weren't letting certain people in because you weren't hot no more, then you started seeing like, what do you mean, not tonight? We said not tonight. And that's what started happening, so yes. But no, I've never seen Citadel guys, even just out and never causing trouble with no one man, ever. JT: I'm not going to lie, it's a little surprising. JM: It's not, though, man. You got to remember it's like, you’re at college. People want to expect just because you have on a uniform and you're not on shore leave, you're just. You're in college. I've seen guys in the navy get called Citadel guys and I'm like, well hell, that's a good thing. You know, it's like they're getting that respect. It's like, you deserve it. You know? It's like, it's a uniform, but it's what you guys represent. And it's what you put your life into. You got to dedicate your time to this and I know how that �Jason Mcfarland 34 first year can be. I played basketball. Basketball at a college isn't different from doing this. You’re going to get hazed, you're going to carry everybody's bags. You're going to get hit with soap in the sock, you're going to get beat up, but next year it's your turn. This is what it is. JT: It's a cycle. JM: It is what it is. Even with band. Like, in band, like, people didn't know bands can be violent. When you're a freshman, oh, you got abused. And you're sitting there in the summer time on asphalt holding an instrument and someone don't like you, give me five. And you got to drop and give this dude five every time he says it regardless. You know how hot that gravel is and rocks you're just doing pushups. Like one kid, he hit the mark for seven something a day. That's how many pushups he had to do. Like, he would just, drop. They didn't like that kid, drop. Every time he got back up, drop. Yes, you got hazed. You got strong, but you got hazed. That's I think the difference between you guys going into the world and other people. It's like you understand it's like, it's a mental game. I might be eating shit now, but, I'll be fine tomorrow. JT: So you'd say that respect's like a real big thing, too, in the music industry and the specially JM: It goes further than anything. I'm not famous. I've never wanted to be. I've been on the Chapell Show. I worked for Dave Chapell. I don't want to be no lead singer. I can sing sometimes if I want. I can write a hit album if I needed to. I've written for other people. It's not my focus. Right now, I'm trying to open a laundromat in my grandfather's land in Awendaw. I've got other things I focus on. I could be all music, but that's not going pay all bills. I'm not on that level and if I did sell some productions and still, I'd �Jason Mcfarland 35 still be doing other things. It's not where my life is. I don't even practice drums. I've got a drum kit set up in my living room I haven't touched in months. I've got one at the band room I only touch when I go there. But, if you see me play, you'd think I'd be doing it every day of my life. But what I try to tell people is like, you guys right now, I got my Bruce Lee training on when I was young, so I don't have to do it every day now that I'm older. Back then, yes, I'd sit in a shed for six hours, so you can't be better than me. Now I already got there. You've got to prove yourself to me. It's yes, it's different. JT: You're on the other side. Absolutely. JM: And like I said, this is going to be our third show next weekend and young kids now, like the kid DJ from Real South Records. He came up, he goes dude, I thought I was a good drummer until I saw you tonight. I'm like, well, you got to believe in yourself. It's all I can tell you. Some people are born with it, some people got to fake it until they make it. Just depends on who you are. JT: That's all I got. Thanks for coming, sharing stories. JM: Hey, you all become successful. Take over this damn world, man. Change everything out there. Please. We need you all. Trust me. JT: Made me miss late or early 90s Charleston a little bit. AK: I was never there. JM: It was fun because we didn't know what they were calling grunge. We just thought they were good because like Mudhoney and bands like that — they were all Seattle. And even Band of Horses, they didn't make it here. They had to got to Seattle. It's hard to break out of Charleston, very. Thank you guys. JT: Ah, hold on, we've got one more thing for you. �Jason Mcfarland 36 AK: Just need you to sign this here. JT: We're going to like store the interview and all that. JM: All right, yes. JT: Give you a list of it. JM: I hope I gave enough informative stuff. You need the address and everything too? JT: Oh, absolutely. I didn't see that. JM: I can. AK: It's going to be a fun paper right now. JM: Yes, they were at the band room, I tell them, man you going to do something about the higher [01:07:42]? I'm like, it seems like they want more of a history of the town than what happened. And yes, Charleston, man, has had, yes, reggae and rock that ran it. JT: We got some — JM: There you go, that's it. AK: All right. Thanks man. JM: Guys, just keep doing it, man. If you can come to the show next week, bring everybody. AK: Hell yes. JT: Oh, absolutely. AK: Hell yes. JM: Cool. Thank you. AK: Thanks man. �Jason Mcfarland 37 JT: Yes, absolutely. He's sitting there saying like, oh yeah, the Ramones played down this back alley. I'm like, what? AK: Yes, it was like — JT: Passed that place like, I don't know, hundreds of times I believe. AK: Yes, he threw out some like big names there. I was like, what? JT: Yes, he was like one of the first guys to like. End of recording. Edited ML 08/21/18 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/51114a833e5770597607e6861ee3e568.mp3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=cP3v-1MOjhtL8WsGnHniy8f7ISSzeggOvjQxM34100snhDGZTBnTq4XdSm8Bb6OowIUCc%7EPwMJ3fxCJWne-9T3Lvz%7E8UVrdc-frxiMnBVrCR7TyULvRTxTVBZWJMM1rmVSNvdesyH8NVbnIWHbDRm0aJLo8zTO1%7EB6bl9dKrXXVmktLhxIe1uw%7Eit9PXHF7PzeAnyauppX42ORRr-PdzfPLbBiWUmouNg363moDmoi-fxsXsIRg-pac6r6c7XSxL1kvuVAB6Y7Zwn59fnEHL6essvcVgR0EFAYEt9aAkfSoUOSPWkP5bPaFYXZ8M8vYhyLs2HrvB%7EN2NUhn7TNP2JA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 034a66a84327a4059c17a8e4924cad1f https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/567ff6cf68901c8cf924e97538658772.jpg?Expires=1792627200&Signature=eJLIc8ZzBaA759Wtcz2AUuObTTz3S9tn14LFD8PDy4QYn7O3J6wsQjM%7ERl91ATXQrVY1LzZyOtGhwTQMJmYMmbPbYj8Qs1uwHGGKBV8aotaV0DGuZMd9nWbuwuhf6qd%7EYb1OihfqqiMTGLK4zoXI2QsJ26oq-ClxbmmnRvDw%7EFBWu5mXm-2KXlrQHWzLthk02CBtvQEordO9UAQggxyOwYKyfTmG5MxZsgzPQs790DCq7kBzoIwtYFV6YfDATGqChy3t70SntiIuvzGHdfsez669IBJOyiVwFmLtWNcWy8Lhy9j7joHVR9AY93xwHnIifCBf1ciojaA-psfrYz7vlA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 700d4e4c020f5f9a12bb20888cf3eec3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Riley K. Franks Anthony J. Kniffin Hunter J. Patrick Jackson J. Taylor Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jason McFarland Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 9 minutes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Jason McFarland, interviewed by Riley K. Franks, Anthony J. Kniffin, Hunter J. Patrick and Jackson G. Taylor, 20 April, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource African American musicians African American musicians--South Carolina Music entrepreneurship Description An account of the resource Sound engineer, drummer, and songwriter Jason Mcfarland was born in New York City in 1973. He has lived in the Lowcountry since the 1980s. His earliest music memories are related to Joyce Kilmer Park in the South Bronx, where every Saturday, bands like Chic or Talking Heads used to play. Additionally, he saw legendary musicians such as The Jackson 5 and James Brown at the Apollo Theater where his cousin worked as a sound engineer. These early experiences were enriched by the Gospel and Funk sounds of Awendaw. Later, he attended Wando High School and was a member of the marching band. In the interview, Mcfarland talks about the origin of his first band, Funny Looking Kids, and explains how young musicians worked to find opportunities to play before the internet era. He reflects about punk culture and states that Black Flag, Bad Brains and the Descendents were his most influential artists. He affirms that touring with Fishbone was one of the most memorable and remarkable experiences of his career. He recalls the Charleston music scene in the 1980s and 1990s, naming the music venues, record stores, and bars that congregated musicians and students in the city. Mcfarland is proud of his multifaceted career as a sound engineer and as a musician, which gives him multiple opportunities to enjoy great music. At the time of the interview, McFarland was playing with two bands, Funny Looking Kids and Hybrid Mutants. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/624 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/2dcadbd6d0d15b211294c35dc84ae15b.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=FI9bwyaB4r93bEpSvHgP0lv62ODO1Qh9iRiEWWZGykCFoIJLwZFDKhzwq4Z3YOaJDMyHb97J-UVWRkuhwKRIA53Fl70vn0peAOfatpGU8tT5ObCVf6t4TtQWZ%7EeQBBlk2o5S60dpWwVVg3UPIc9cRTZooMZGyjiPOvLfMiS699PM8jHss71xhJLr3A4hQvexqBtn0lBKDPLSpH8tBjS%7EQLT8BnU6dSr3NZNstNiFKPy986oknUCGxYJjkkIn2ULomK6lWxXJ1Zp8HTSwag-ary5Okxkct8Ah3WVRIeRanBgjNJYJOirrV2yvWQvQ5zOFN%7EwNI1tQm8ZiGrhil9l6gg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 269907ba532a5941a22f17b062747340 PDF Text Text —TRANSCRIPT - AISHA KENYETTA Interviewee: AISHA KENYETTA Interviewer: MICHAEL RICE, HOLLY RICKET, GABRIEL GRIMSTAD Interview Date: APRIL 11, 2017 Location: Charleston Length: 48 min. GABRIEL GRIMSTAD: Okay, can you tell us your full name and your date of birth? AK: Yes. My name is Aisha Frazier, and my birthday is October 2nd, 1980. GG: Okay. And I have a couple questions about like your personal life, especially growing up. I want to know like what was life like for you growing up in a small city in South Carolina, like really small. AK: A very small city. I grew up in — I graduated with sixty-one people. That's how small my town is. It's Monetta, South Carolina. I am an only child to a mom who is a pastor and a father who is a deacon. So, PK, like I said, only child, but my mom is the oldest of seven. My dad's the baby of seven. So, lots of cousins, lots of family around at all times. My dad's family is the musical family. My dad's church is the one that I grew up in. And so, everything pretty much revolved around the family and what we were going to do after church on Sunday. And everybody either sings or plays an instrument in our family. So, it was music at all times, even if it was playing records or playing cassette tapes, yes, you know, music all the time in our family. GG: What was that like when you were young? You had a mom who was a pastor and a dad that was a deacon. I mean... �Aisha Kenyetta 2 AK: It didn't really cause any issues, I think, until I became a teenager. And then, you know, you run into those — you have those moral decisions to make as a teenager. Do I really want to go with my friends, or am I going to be the good girl and just go home? And so, that's kind of where it got dicey, but I survived with minimal punishments. I got a couple of speeding tickets, but other than that, you know, pretty much survived unscathed. GG: Okay. And we saw we were looking into you that you went to Erskine College... AK: I did. GG: ...and then to Southern Wesleyan? AK: Yes. GG: Did you always like — did you have other aspirations besides being a singer? AK: I've always been interested in a bunch of different things. My BA is in athletic training, and I love sports, love being able to help people, and my ultimate goal was to actually become a funeral-services director. I haven't gotten there yet. Every time I get my classes started, something comes up where I can't finish. But that was my ultimate goal, and I got the athletic training degree to get myself into the medical services and then I would move to the next level and move to the next level. But singing has always been just I wouldn't say a hobby. It's always been there. So, it was never something I looked at as a career. It's just always been there. So, when I thought of having a career, I didn't think of music as a career, because it was always there. �Aisha Kenyetta 3 GG: Right. So, do you see yourself one day actually being able to take those classes? AK: Yeah, one day, hopefully. GG: You're still pretty young, so. AK: Yeah. One day, hopefully, I'll be able to—you know, I've been able to apprentice at funeral homes, and so I've gotten a lot of the practical work in. Still something that I want to do. I just haven't gotten the classes under my belt to be certified and have that piece of paper to say I can do it. GG: So, what's life like balancing your career, like your work life and your personal life? Being a singer, you know, you're probably constantly on the go. AK: Yes. GG: Is it difficult? AK: Very. I have a seven-month-old and a twenty-month-old. And so, and my husband is currently deployed. I have a day job. I work for Bank of America, fifteen years now, and it's difficult. Every day is planned to the hour. I have something to do every hour of every day, and I've never been very organized. I am uber-organized now. (laughs) HR: Yeah, I bet so! Two little ones. GG: I feel like you probably have to be. AK: Yes, yes. My mother-in-law is amazing. My village is amazing. So, that's really the only way I can do what I do. That, and coffee. GG: So, you mentioned that you want to one day be a funeral-services director. Is that what you imagine your life after, you know, a singing career being? �Aisha Kenyetta 4 AK: Yeah. GG: Is there a life after the singing career? Do you want to always do that? AK: I think it's just going to be something that's always there. You know, being able to sing is something that I, you know — being able to perform, I guess I should say, is just that's what I really enjoy. Being on stage, being able to connect to people, being able to make people happy or to even to show appreciation, you know, whether it's to sing for somebody's wedding ceremony or even to sing if somebody requests you to sing at a family member's funeral. I mean, for people to entrust you with their special moments is a big deal, whether you're getting paid to do it or not. So, if I can carry a tune at ninety-three years old, then I plan to still be able to do it. GG: Right. That's like a skill set that doesn't really go away. AK: Exactly. HOLLY RICKET: So, I want to go back to the beginning, and there's something that we read, talked about you were in the choir. And he'll talk and ask you more questions about that. But how did you get started in the choir, like at church? Was this the church that your mom is a pastor at? AK: Yes. HR: Okay. AK: She wasn't the pastor then. It's because it's, like I said, it's my dad's church, actually. But we just, you know, it's a family church. Everybody is connected somehow by blood and just everybody is a singer and the choir would sing on Sundays and I'd want to be with my cousin on the choir. And so, I would sit with them and just started singing with them. And somebody gave me a little plastic play microphone and I would carry it �Aisha Kenyetta 5 around all the time and sing. HR: So, you were in the choir even when you were little. AK: Even when I was little. HR: And you were in choir until... AK: Until I left to go to Erskine, so until '98. HR: So, when did you transition out of gospel music, or is that still what you sing? AK: I still, yeah. I still, I'm Worship Leader at Seacoast North Charleston. HR: Okay. I go there sometimes. It's a good church. AK: Yeah. So, I still — I've never transitioned out of gospel. My mom is happy to hear that. HR: Yes! AK: You know, I don't think it's something that you can get away from, just because when you're singing gospel, you're not just performing. You know, you're worshiping. You're creating an experience for others to worship. And so, it becomes more than just a performance. So, I don't think I'll ever stop singing gospel. HR: But what other kind of music do you also sing? I know I read somewhere that you've done covers for bands like Guns N' Roses. AK: I'm a huge GNR fan! HR: So, how did you get into that area, and were your family supportive of that? AK: Yes. I... in our household, there was nothing that was considered the music we don't listen to. I mean, we listened to everything. My parents have always been avid music lovers, and, you know, we had the records that we would play on Saturday �Aisha Kenyetta 6 morning while we were cleaning the house. And everything. My dad had Black Sabbath records and, you know, we listened. We listened to everything, and my parents always made sure that I knew that I don't have to just listen to what's considered music for black people, you know. I could listen to whatever I wanted to listen to, and I gravitated to... 80s hair bands and classic rock. That's kind of where — and funk. So, which that made my daddy happy, because he's a huge Parliament-Funkadelic fan. And so, that's kind of where I landed. Chaka Khan is my — she's my one. She's my idol. If she were to walk in this room right now, you'd have to give me smelling salts. And so, the funk and 80s rock, classic rock, that's what I love. So, give me some Bad Company, GNR, and Chaka Khan, and I'm good. HR: So, you went from gospel music and you still do it and then you started doing covers. So, when did you transition, or have you, to your own music, writing your own music? AK: I am writing a lot. I've been a little bit hesitant to show what I've written, and one of my friends is working with me on that, because always in the beginning, I would only write if I felt negative emotions. I never really wrote because I was happy to be here. It was always, you know, I'm furious and I'd write things down. And so, now I'm getting to the point where I can put things on paper that aren't emotionally charged. I can put things down. You know, I woke up this morning. It was pretty outside, and it made me think of something to write down. I have not put that on record anywhere. HR: Have you ever sung any of your own music? AK: Yes, I have. HR: Where? �Aisha Kenyetta 7 AK: Not out in public. HR: Oh! Do you think you'll get there? AK: I have for friends. Maybe at some point. It's very... it exposes you. It really — it exposes you in a way that's really... even if it's not necessarily something that you are revealing, it's like you're putting yourself out there, you know, for other people to hear and other people to see. And so, for me, I think it's just going to be, at what point am I okay with that exposure? And I'm not there yet. HR: Yeah. So, then, how did you get introduced to the band AmpSquared? AK: AmpSquared, yeah. HR: How did that come about? AK: So, AmpSquared is me and my friend Rodrick Simmons. Rodrick is actually the music director at Seacoast North Charleston. And Rodrick and I used to sing with Secrets together a while back. And when I left Secrets, Rodrick left Secrets, and we decided to collaborate. And what we really wanted to do was just amp up, you know, the cover scene. You know, everybody does covers, and they sound just like the record, or they, you know. But what we wanted to do is just funk everything, I mean, just even... everything that you think you're going to hear, turn it on its ear. And he was ready for that. We wanted a full band with horns and musical stylings and just, you know, really taking it up a notch. And so, we decided to work together. And now we're neighbors in real life. And so, we get to really, you know, we are a for-real garage band right now, because we're — . HR: Are you looking for any of this to ever get published? �Aisha Kenyetta 8 AK: Yes. HR: Or is it already in some way, like published? Is it on the radio? AK: We have some things that are. We have some Christmas singles out, but we haven't done anything beyond that. Now, Rodrick has. Rodrick works and he writes for gospel artists all over and he's toured with D'Angelo. He's toured with Joss Stone, people like that. And so, now he's basically, I think I'm his pet project, pretty much, but, you know, at some point, you know, I'll have some things out there. But, again, it becomes how much of yourself are you ready to put out there? HR: Right. So, do you do like gigs around Charleston? AK: I do. HR: And how do you market yourself for those? AK: I really am more of a freelance performer. I work with just about every band around. I do a lot with Emerald Empire, which is a collective of musicians here. We do a lot of weddings. We do corporate events, things like that. And then, I work with Super Deluxe. I work with Plane Jane. I work with pretty much whoever is out there that would like to sing with me. And I stay busy. HR: But then another question I was really interested in, your husband. So, I read somewhere that you guys were recently married... AK: 2014. HR: ...with the two kids. So, does your husband share that musical interest with you, or does he support what you do? AK: He loves it. He won't sing. He can sing, but he won't sing. And he, you know, he supports me, and if it's — even if it's staying at home with the boys so I can do a �Aisha Kenyetta 9 last—minute show, you know, he's supporting. Or if we get that one night where my mother-in-law decided to take them, you know, he'll come with me to my show or he'll come pick me up or drop me off and things like that. So, he's very supportive. HR: That's awesome. MICHAEL RICE: So, we know that you transitioned kind of from out of gospel into more of the R&B and 80s music. But I want to ask you, of all of the genres that you have sung, what is your favorite, if you have one? AK: 80s. 80s, rock. 80s rock, 80s pop. Universally, everybody likes it. So, from a performance standpoint, if you sing Whitney Houston "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" or if you sing Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," everybody in the room is going to sing along with you. And to me, that's where I'm having the most fun, when I can be out and in the crowd and enjoying the crowd and, you know, holding my microphone out for somebody to say, "Whoa!" You know. So, from a performance standpoint, I would say just 80s pop, 80s rock. From a personal standpoint, my favorite to sing is the funk. Give me the funk. MR: So, when you're doing cover art, when you're a cover artist, a lot of times, you have to sing these extremely difficult songs, like you mentioned Whitney Houston. Someone who sings one of her songs, they have to be really prepared for it. But every now and again, you may get someone who you think can kind of hold a torch to Whitney. Have you ever gotten that reaction from a crowd where they say, "Wait a minute. Who's Whitney?" AK: Yes. There are certain — there are certain songs that... you've got to be very bold to try. There are certain Whitney songs that I think are safe. You know, "Dance with �Aisha Kenyetta 10 Somebody" is still not easy to sing but one of her safer songs to sing. You know, everybody is not going to try "I Will Always Love You," you know. I do "Don't Stop Believing." There are a lot of artists and Charleston that won't do it. I'm either crazy, or — but I can do it. That's probably the one that when I start singing it, people are like, "Is she really going to do this? Is she going to do it?" And they kind of look and wait and then when you hit the note, they're like, "She did it." (laughs) MR: Have you ever really participated in like talent shows? A lot of people get their fame from talent shows. Have you ever been a part of those? AK: When I was younger, I would, you know, be in talent shows. Now, not so much, just because I sing all the time, you know. Even karaoke. When I go to karaoke, I will purposely pick something I've never sung before, because, I mean, I can sing "Uptown Funk" in my sleep. I can sing "At Last" in my sleep. There are certain songs that... that really and truly, if you're a performer and you go to karaoke, it's not fair, for the others. And it's not about performing. It's about having fun. So, you know, I'm not going to karaoke to try to show you how well I can sing. So, I always try to keep that in mind when I do stuff like that. I don't — very rarely will I do a talent show, unless it was just strictly this is Aisha and she's a singer. She's going to sing you a song. Now, if it's a competition, I won't do it. MR: So, you mentioned you are kind of transitioning into making your own music, writing your own music. You also mentioned that Chaka Khan was one of your idols. So, do you kind of see yourself in her, and are you modeling your music off of hers? �Aisha Kenyetta 11 AK: I definitely. I can definitely see the parallels in how I write, though I even, even the way I sing, from a covers standpoint, she's always — I'm very percussionfocused. I'm more of, I will always tell people, I am not a finesse singer. I'm a power singer. So, you know, if there's a note that I need to hit, I can hit it. But I'm not going to give you thirty-two notes in five seconds. That's not me. And that's not Chaka. But when I sing, my diction is rhythmic. My voice is an extension of the percussion instruments. It's not — I'm not the violin. I'm the bass. You know. MR: So, as a singer, a lot of times, when you're a very well singer, you get everyone asking you, saying if you decide to go to church on a random Sunday, someone will say, "Oh, well, come up here and sing this selection." I see that. I've seen that a lot. Have you ever reached that point where you're just like, I don't want to sing this week; just give me a break? AK: There have been times where I didn't go places, because I knew that if I got there, they would ask me to sing. And I'm not proud of that. (laughs) But, you know, sometimes you do want to just sit in the audience. However, I know that I've been given a gift, and for the most part, I try to, you know, honor that in any way I can. Every time I step foot in church, I always have one in my pocket, because you might have to sing. So, instead of going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, what am I going to sing, I have one in my pocket when I pull up in the parking lot. MR: That's great. HR: That's smart. You're always ready. MR: So, I believe we've all heard your voice. We've done our research. And you mentioned that you want to have a career in funeral services. So, what will it take for you �Aisha Kenyetta 12 to kind of branch off and go straight in your career in music, because I think we all can agree that it's worth it. AK: You know, I don't know. Everybody asks me that question. You know, "What is it going to take for you to say 'I'm going to be a full-time performer'?" And, you know, I don't know what it is. I feel like if it happens, then it happens. I'm probably not going to do anything to purposefully make it happen. I'm content with I'm blessed to be able to work as much as I work, and at the moment, that's enough for me. That's enough for me. You know, at some point, I'll put some music out there. Do I need to be a, quote/unquote, "successful performer"? I feel like I am. I'm successful. I'm successful, based on what I wanted to do as a singer. Would I like to have a platinum single or a platinum album? That would be awesome. But then, on the flip side of that, can I take my babies on tour? You know. And Mommy is much more important than performer for me at the moment. So, and I'm kind of out of that window of cutesy pop singer. You know, I'm past that age. So, (laughs) I have to... you know, I think about, from a marketing standpoint, you know, how they market singers, how they market performers, especially women. I'm thirty-six. You know, I'm kind of outside of that, you know. (laughs) MR: It's never too late. It's never too late. GABRIEL GRIMSTAD: Okay, yeah, going back on your music tastes, like what you like, I'm a huge fan of 80s rock. So, I want to know, like what's your favorite band? AK: Guns N' Roses. GG: Guns N' Roses. That's it, huh? AK: Guns N' Roses is my favorite 80s rock band. But then, of course, I love �Aisha Kenyetta 13 Poison and I love Toto and I, you know… Gosh, I don't — I mean, I could go on. GG: Yeah. It's a long list, I'm sure. AK: Yes. Bon Jovi. GG: Like Bad Company, you said. AK: Bad Company. GG: Great music. AK: I just, there's so much energy in it, you know. It's hair-flipping music, even if you don't have hair. You know, you want to just, you know. So, it's just it's an instant party the minute you put on something in the 80s, in that 80s realm. GG: Right. So, going back on some of the earlier music that you wrote, you said it was kind of really personal and everything. Why do you feel like you didn't put it out there? Did you just feel like you weren't ready to, you weren't ready to do it? AK: Yeah, just I wasn't ready to present myself in that light, just because, you know, I've gone through some things and my first husband was in Iraq twice, came home PTSD, lots of issues, and I wrote a lot during that time. And so, I wrote it to get it out. And now, when I look back and read it or I look back and hear the things that I've recorded, I mean, literally just on a tape recorder, it's something — like it literally makes my heart ache to hear. And I don't know if I could put that out to the world to feel or to hear, you know, how I felt at that time. And I think it's just which — I've been told that that's what you want to put out, is that heart-wrenching stuff, because it's real and you can feel. HR: And other people can relate to it, especially other people in situations you've been in. �Aisha Kenyetta 14 AK: Right. And so, it just boils down to me saying, okay, let's put it out there. And it's just, you know, it's you feel, you know, like you're the only person naked in the room, basically. GG: Yeah, I know that a lot of my favorite musicians, they have like transitions in their musical career where you can clearly see like different emotions in their musical styling. It's like some of their earlier stuff will be like dark and really deep and then it starts to get like more upbeat as they go along and they're at like different phases. Do you feel like — . AK: Oh, yes. GG: Do you feel like your music has done the same thing, the stuff that you write? AK: Oh, yes. Just even just flipping, everything is in the same book. I've got one big binder, and I just add pages to it. And everything, it's actually backwards, so the first page is the most recent stuff, and then as you flip through, it gets darker, because the original things were dark. And then as, you know, you move through and you survive a difficult relationship—I'll just put it that way—you know, and then you find love again and then, you know, you go through losses and then you adopt a baby and then you find out you're going to have a baby and then, you know, all these things. And so, now everything is about being a mom. Everything is about Mommy and, you know, loving, being a parent and, you know, looking at these little faces, whereas before, it was, you know, eee, eee, eee. So. GG: Well, that's got to be pretty neat, though. I mean, it's like heart-wrenching, some of your older music, but at the same time, you have like a very detailed account of �Aisha Kenyetta 15 like your life. AK: Yes. GG: And it, you know, whether you want to go back or not, it's something that I feel like a lot of people, you know. AK: It's the ultimate diary. It really is. It's going to be an amazing gift to someone someday. I don't know that I would want my children to read it all, but maybe when they are thirty-six, they could handle it. But I definitely wouldn't want my children to read everything in that book at sixteen or seventeen years old. HR: So, I have a question. Do you have like a worst experience onstage or like something that went wrong onstage ever? I'm just curious. AK: I've had two bad experiences. We did a wedding at—I probably shouldn't name the venue. But it was so—they were so concerned about the decibels. There was a person walking around with the meter to check the decibels of the sound. We were outside. And it's really hard to sing "Crazy in Love" softly. So, after every song, you know, and they would come over and "You're too loud. You're too loud." And I mean, we really, everything was pianissimo. I mean, there was no way you could raise your voice. I mean, so, that was difficult. And then, I did a wedding one time and I got there and I completely lost my voice. I couldn't sing. I couldn't. I could barely talk. Later, well, the next day, I found out I had bronchitis and something else. I can't remember. So, for two-and-a-half hours, I was —I had to talk my way through every song, which by the end, I sounded like I was barking by the end of the night. But had to do it, and the people were like, "Oh, you were great." And I'm crying and, "This is the worst night ever." �Aisha Kenyetta 16 We've had malfunctions where the speakers didn't work or a speaker blew at a show one time. We've had drunk people fall into the drums or fall into you or pull you down or pour drinks or upchuck on you. I mean, people get touchy-feely with the band. They, you know, they think you're their best friend, and, I mean, you want them to think that you're here for just them. But sometimes, the boundaries get crossed, and those are difficult nights. HR: So, then, do you have like a most memorable experience, going on the other side of the spectrum? AK: Mm… I mean, they're all. There are nights where the show was so much fun and you're so high going home, I ride home in silence, because nothing on the radio, nothing on my iTunes can compare to how I felt and how I feel driving home and I'm replaying it in my head. And you get home and you shower and you lay down in the bed and you're still just like... like, oh, and when we did that, that was so hot! I have those nights probably twice a week. HR: Oh, that's awesome. AK: So, you know, it's — I couldn't put one on top. I couldn't put one on top. HR: That's still a pretty good feeling to have. So, backtracking, when did you have your first solo? If you went from being in a gospel choir, when was that first experience of a solo? AK: My first solo was at church. It was. (laughs) And it wasn't supposed to be mine. It was the girl who was supposed to be singing the song forgot the words, and I was maybe five or six. And she forgot the words. She started crying. And I picked it up and I just started singing. And so, I guess you would consider that my first. And so, she's �Aisha Kenyetta 17 standing there, (crying sound) and I'm singing the song. And from that point on, I started singing. Even in the choir, we did. We had a mass choir, and, I mean, as big as my area is, a mass choir, you know, isn't huge. But, you know, we had a choir of thirty singers, and I could do, you know, I would sing lead a lot. And so, I would say probably from that five-year-old point to going to now. HR: Wow. And in all this time of musical background, did you ever learn to play an instrument? AK: I play piano. HR: Okay. AK: Yeah. I play piano. HR: What made you pick the piano up? AK: It was the one that I could already do it. I started playing at church by ear, and then my mom said, "If you're going to play it, you're going to play it for real." And so, she put me in lessons. So, that's where I learned how to read music. And I played at our home church until I graduated high school, and then when I went to Erskine, I played for a church in Greenwood until I graduated college. So, that was my extra money. And I played. And then after that, I was like I want to sing. I don't want to play anymore. HR: So, you don't play the piano anymore? AK: I can. I just don't. (laughs) I'll play if I'm at home, if I'm writing, or if I'm learning a song, I'll play it to myself to learn it. And every now and then, I've had to play at church if Roger couldn't make it or a special occasion and they wanted a bigger band, I'll play. I play as needed. So, but I always say I'd rather sing than play. And, you know, it's served its purpose. �Aisha Kenyetta 18 MR: When you were a child, you mentioned how you got started, how you wanted to be on a gospel choir with your older cousins. Do you kind of see in the future your children having that same kind of dream to want to be on a choir or onstage with their mom? AK: I think so. Tyree, who is my big boy, Tyree is the one we've adopted and he's twenty months old and he's drawn to the instruments. Most kids all, they all go to the drums. Tyree likes guitars and pianos. So, when he plays my keyboard at home and he'll play it and dance around and Joe is seven months old and, you know, Joe performed with me until I was eight months pregnant. (laughs) So, Joe is onstage for every high note and for, you know, every song I danced around to. And you can tell he's the singer. He, when I do Motown out at The Pour House, always sits — that's one of the few venues that's kid-friendly on a Sunday afternoon. And so, you know, my mother-in-law or my husband will bring them out, and they can see me onstage. And Tyree is amazed at the guitar player. He doesn't care about what Mommy is doing. But Joseph is always watching me. And anytime there's—I find it telling that if you want Joseph to sit still, which at seven months is, you know, almost impossible, put Whitney Houston videos on. He will sit and he will watch. He won't make a peep. MR: That should quiet anybody up. AK: (laughs) Yes. So, I'm thinking I'm pretty sure Joe is a singer. MR: So, you mentioned you were actually pregnant while you were onstage. Was that difficult for you to be able to perform? AK: I was fine up until about, I would say, about the fifth month. As it got hot and doing weddings outside, it started to be a little bit more difficult. And then as my �Aisha Kenyetta 19 belly got bigger, I lost some of my stamina for, you know, to hold a long note or even to hit a high note, because my diaphragm got scrunched together. So, and we did a Sly & the Family Stone tribute show at The Pour House and I put it on the calendar as my last performance. And about two weeks before that, I thought to myself, mm, I thought I was going to be able to make it, but I don't think I can make it. But ended up doing that, and I even did the national anthem at the River Dogs at nine months pregnant. That was—I prayed a lot right before I walked out there, because I was, you know, I handled my pregnancy well, you know, so I wasn't waddling too bad, but just, you know, "rocket's red glare" is crucial. And — . HR: Yes, it is! AK: And you know, "rocket's red glare," and I was just like, "Come on, baby, stay low, stay low, baby, stay low." And that was, you know, that was the hardest part, was just getting the air in to push out. So, that was the hardest part about performing while pregnant and just getting tired. I got tired super-fast. So, there was always a stool or a chair close by that I could sit on always. MR: Has your voice changed at all over the years? AK: Yeah. MR: It seems like you've been singing a lot. AK: Yeah. I didn't realize that it had changed, because, you know, I hear it all the time. So, I will say, but when I go home and sing at home, especially when I sing at church at home, my daddy will say, you know, "You know, you can sing." And I'm like, "Well, I couldn't sing before?" And he says, "Well, yeah, but it's different now." And I think confidence is one thing that makes a big difference. And also, you know your body. �Aisha Kenyetta 20 You know your voice. You know what you can do. You know what you can't do. And I am a firm believer in staying in your lane as a singer. Everybody can't sing everything. There are songs out there that I'd love to do. Beyoncé's "Love On Top," it's not in my lane, so I don't do it. Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love," in my lane, I can do it. I'm not going to try to do a song that's not in my lane, because it's going to end up bad. It's not going to end well, you know. You know your voice and you know what you can do. If you need to take it down a key, take it down a key. If you need to take it up a key, take it up a key. You know what the top of your range is, and when you strain past that, that's when you lose your voice or you have a sore throat or you're hoarse the next day. But if you're in a range that's comfortable for you, you can, you know, you can do whatever. And so, you learn how to work within your range. And that's, I think that's what I've... what has changed about my voice is that I know what I can do. And so, I keep myself in what I can do instead of trying to do what she can do, because she may be a great singer. We don't—we're not going to sound alike. And I can't be Chaka Khan, you know, because she's Chaka Khan. I can be Aisha, and Chaka Khan can be my idol. She can be my role model. But I'm not Chaka Khan. And so, I can't. If I try to sing just like her, then I'm not being authentic to myself, even if I'm singing her song. I still have to sing it like Aisha. HR: So, having this range, performing at weddings, do they request specific music from you when you're—and is that anytime like out of your range? AK: There are — most weddings, there's always maybe at least one song that I may have to learn for usually first dances. They may want something. But the good thing �Aisha Kenyetta 21 is that I can—I pretty much sing every genre. And the only song—there is a song that someone asked for me to sing, and it wasn't necessarily that I couldn't sing it. I just didn't like the song. And it was a mother-son song, and it was cheesy. It was a cheesy song. But for the most part, there's I can learn it. I will learn up to three songs for a wedding. But, you know, I shouldn't have to learn a whole set list for your wedding. So, I say, "These are the songs that I can do, you know, and then let me know what genres you want at your ceremony." Or what don't you want to hear is the first thing I ask. "What don't you want to hear?" Some people may say, "No country," or they may say, "No Electric Slide." And I'm completely here for that, you know? No line dances or, you know, they may say—I had a wedding one time where they said they didn't want any Michael Jackson. INT: That's not fair! AK: And I thought to myself, "Well, that's my whole set list!" So, you know, it just depends on what they want. I've done weddings where all they want is old-school Motown or all they want is 80s rock or all they want is 90s R&B. So, you know, being a wedding singer, you have to be willing to sing, and you sing the same songs every week, because everybody wants the same thing. So, you know, like I said, "Uptown Funk," you know, you sing it every week. "Respect," you sing it every week. "At Last," "Don't Stop Believing." There are certain songs that you are going to sing at every single wedding. And then you have those oneoffs, and they want Bell Biv DeVoe and, you know, I'm ready, you know, ready. GG: How long does it take for you to get ready for something like that? AK: Not too long. There are very few songs that I'm not at least familiar with. �Aisha Kenyetta 22 And just performing as often as we do and doing as many weddings and things as we do, your set list grows, because as you learn a song for this wedding, it goes into your set list, because somebody else might want to hear it later. So, I mean, if I've got to learn one or two songs, it may take me a week, and then we'll run it before the ceremony or before the dances and then do it. HR: So, how often do you guys get together and practice or prepare? AK: We don't. HR: So, if you have an event coming up on, say, this Saturday, when would you prepare for it? AK: I would prepare myself this week. HR: But as a group? AK: As a group, we would get there early enough to run it before the guests are there. Very rarely do we actually get together and rehearse. But we all play together all the time, so we know each other's nuances, you know. So, you can—it really is a familiarity when you're singing with people that you perform with all the time. Everybody—you know when I'm going to vamp out. You know when I'm going to go back to—and everybody's got their own hand signals and, you know, you know what that means when you're playing with different people. And that helps. From a preparedness standpoint, you don't have to rehearse, because they know you're going to be there and you're going to be ready to sing it. In situations like that, you don't veer from the original. So, if it's something that you've got to learn to perform, you sing it just like the original so that there are no errors. They learn it like the original, and you learn it like the original, so when you get together, there's no issues. �23 Aisha Kenyetta INT: Interesting. GG: So, it's a lot like a family, like you were saying. You all really do know each other very well. AK: Yes. GG: Okay. That probably makes everything a lot easier, I would think. AK: It does. It does. INT: Okay, anything else? MR: It may not be too professional of me, but I wouldn't mind to hear a little bit in person, if you wouldn't mind. AK: Okay. I didn't come here with one in my pocket. GG: Caught you off guard. AK: You did! Well, like I said, she's my idol. So, Chaka Khan. [Sings] "Through the fire, to the limit, to the wall, for a chance to be with you, I'd gladly risk it all. Through the fire, through whatever, come what may, for a chance at loving you, I'd take it all the way, right down to the wire, even through the fire." MR: Oh, yeah. INT: That's good! That is really good. INT: I just sing in the shower. So... INT: That was amazing. AK: That's early-morning voice. GG: That puts me to shame. All right, well, thank you so much for being here with us today. It was great to have you. 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Gabriel T. Grimstad Michael L. Rice Holly L. Rickett Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Aisha Kenyetta Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 48 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Aisha Kenyetta, interviewed by Gabriel T. Grimstad, Michael L. Rice and Holly L. Rickett, 11 April, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource African American musicians African American musicians--South Carolina Women musicians Description An account of the resource Vocalist Aisha Kenyetta (a.k.a Aisha Frazier) was born in 1980, in Monetta, South Carolina. Before going to college, her life revolved around family and church activities. Kenyetta describes herself as a freelance vocalist with a powerful voice: “ I'm a power singer... but when I sing, my diction is rhythmic. My voice is an extension of the percussion instruments. It's not—I'm not the violin. I'm the bass.” She performs with her own band, AmpSquared, and several others such as Super Deluxe, Plane Jane, and the musician collective Emerald Empire. Additionally, she is the North Charleston Seacoast Church's Worship Leader. In the interview, Kenyetta discusses balancing family, her day work, and music career and states she is grateful for the many opportunities to perform. At the time of the interview, Kenyetta was writing her own material. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/619 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/f604b2f8cee927baf3a6bd3dc307e17e.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=wELD4CkXatejvHJZH6ErrkGEraxQW%7EYkbN4o-1-hiGhHSec5unNjZxxs5ol6NXYpWPv%7E6UtSrYOcGLVp8wPky-gWj62yj4vRC86h2rAKSzcP9eR-SOP5rCydQJ5GoL1H7E8yiZ39xAShzLzHUkPZ9zY7k9XQRl7Hj2DvsP%7E%7EX18t-PCHNumI8JnDmb0O4JrN-zuusU1eH77ITtfhCLXQAezhUsMOjht36TADKnW9fn-lp0QfiKcjmvHCYD8UGPe0xhp%7E8IHtfpk-FvAX74JqEdvozS-4EEsQ1q5I7m8YP5AGWpU%7E5YC8R0Or9Bj2Cl6Q5kiqauVkTQyXKJw6IyZosg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0396909d269e94172b0add41243595bf PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - MERVIN JENKINS Interviewee: MERVIN JENKINS Interviewer: KIERAN TAYLOR Interview Date: MARCH 16, 2017 Location: CHARLESTON, SC Length: 69 min. Mervin Jenkins: Where are you, baby? KWT: So, is the interview team ready for this? Okay. Well, I'll turn it right over to you, but... yeah, I'll just turn it right to you to take it away. Male Voice: Good morning, sir. Mervin Jenkins: Good morning! Male Voice: Could you tell us your whole name? Mervin Jenkins: Mervin Jenkins, Mervin Antonio Jenkins, AKA Spec the Spectacular. Male Voice: Yes, sir. From... Mervin Jenkins: Eutawville, South Carolina. Male Voice: Eutawville, South Carolina. I guess we're just going to ask you some general questions, starting out from childhood and working our way up to your career to today. Mervin Jenkins: All right. Male Voice: Can you tell us about your childhood, life as a child? Mervin Jenkins: So, I grew up, um, in the very big town of Eutawville, South Carolina, which is in Orangeburg County. I say very big town, because Eutawville, to this �Mervin Jenkins 2 day, doesn't have a stoplight. So, it's very, very big. Male Voice: How do you think that upbringing in Eutawville has impacted or affected your life today? Mervin Jenkins: So, I'll tell you, I cut the questions short, obviously. The upbringing in Eutawville basically — and we'll come back to that question, if you don't mind. I grew up first-born to Mary and Melvin Jenkins. My mom, she retired as a schoolteacher. My dad still works as a local mechanic there in Orangeburg County, auto mechanic. And I grew up really enjoying the early days, you know, not knowing that the family wasn't well-off financially, I mean, by no means rich. But above poverty, so sort of middle-class, I guess, maybe lower-middle-class, but I didn't recognize that as a kid. My parents definitely did a great job of making me concentrate on best things in life and the most important things. So, a very good childhood, good memories, man. Male Voice: So, what about these young days sparked your interest in music and education, also? Mervin Jenkins: Great question. So, I said my dad was an auto mechanic. I used to spend a lot of time with him down at the garage, and one thing I learned really quick is I didn't want to do that for a living. The greasy tools and changing oil and this goes on and on, especially overhauling an engine, and it sort of created the first, I guess, kind of resentment between my dad and I, because that was his plan, for me to take over the garage one day, I'm sure. And we would get in little spouts about it. You know, I'd rather be on the basketball court shooting around with the boys versus being down there watching him as I got older. And I just knew that it had to be something different. �Mervin Jenkins 3 I didn't really know what it was until about 1983. I'm in my dad's garage and Run DMC, "Sucker MC's" comes on the radio and I just heard that song and, obviously, rap was going on well before that, but that was the first one to really catch my attention and I said, yeah, I think I can do that and I want to do that. And it sort of just went from there, man. Male Voice: So, would you say that music or education is your — which one are you more passionate about, music or education? Mervin Jenkins: At this juncture in my life, education, for sure. You ask me that question twenty years ago, I'm sure the answer would have been different, but certainly education at this point. Male Voice: Sure. So, we've done our research on you. Mervin Jenkins: [laughs] That's scary. Male Voice: Yeah. And we want to know if you can tell us more about the story. We saw you mentioned in one of your previous interviews a story of a homeless man and how he impacted your life, what he said. Can you tell us that story? Mervin Jenkins: Yeah, sure. So, as an undergrad student at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, historically black university, I would frequent the Five Points area of Columbia, South Carolina. Anybody here from Columbia? Know Columbia really well? Five Points? If you know anything, you know Five Points, you know, especially at your age. You go down there and have a good time. So, I would have been... around your age at that time and I'd hang out in Five Points and almost every time I went down, there was a guy there. And, you know, looking back on it, I remember interviewing on NPR, and I said that the guy was homeless. But I'm really not sure. You know, I saw him on the �Mervin Jenkins 4 streets all the time. So, he saw me this one day and he stopped me and he said, "Dread." Now, I'm bald-headed now, but you guys got to imagine back then, I had been growing dreadlocks. As a matter of fact, I just cut them maybe five or six years ago, and they were down to my waist when I cut them. But I had no choice. I was going bald. So, end of that story. But anyway, this guy had dreads, and he happened to be bald in the middle with long dreads coming down the side. And he stopped me and he's always called me Baby Dread once I got to know him. And he said, "Baby Dread," he said, "Let me ask you a question, man. You always up and down the streets there. I see you with your boys. You know, what's... what's life for you? What's ahead, you know? What are you going to do?" And he started asking questions that I really wasn't thinking about, didn't even take time to reflect on, and long story short too late, he was basically asking me, am I aware of my surroundings as far as the people I was rolling with. And why he identified me as somebody to pull from the group and have that conversation with, I don't know, but it triggered something in me and it was enough to make me go back to campus. At the time, I was getting high every week with the boys and I'd never drunk much in college but smoked the ass of marijuana. So, I was getting high and all that other stuff, and I went back and just kind of said to my group that I was rolling with like, look, fellas, there's a whole lot more to life than what we're doing right now, and why don't we try to flip it up a little bit? Maybe on the weekends, we go to your house. You live in Florida. Meet your parents. You guys come down to Eutawville and meet mine. We go to New York to yours and next weekend, next month. And they just kind of looked at me �Mervin Jenkins 5 like, really, dude? And I bounced. I left the group, never looked back. And at my age now, I'm looking at some of the guys that were in that room when I walked out, and we're talking about at least twenty guys. I probably wouldn't trade places with fifteen of them, without even thinking, off the top of the head. Life just didn't turn out too well, but they stayed on that same trajectory. And, you know, it is what it is, man. Male Voice: So, what about that transition, you know, I mean, you're obviously seeing those guys every day and you're making life changes. Was that transition, I guess, to a more successful path, was it a tough transition? Mervin Jenkins: It was probably one of the toughest things I've done to this day, man, to be quite frank with you. Peer pressure is a beast, man. You know, we think it's something that just affects young people, but peer pressure even now as an adult, you deal with that for the rest of your life. And I remember... I'll give you a perfect example. I got arrested for shoplifting a pack of Black & Milds in Columbia, South Carolina, the little Black & Milds cigars? Didn't have to do it. You know, the mom had sent me my weekly allowance. I had like a hundred dollars' cash in my pocket, another check for a hundred dollars or maybe even more. And I decided with buddies that I was going to do the cool thing, and instead of paying for a box of cigars, I was going to steal it. So, I got arrested, taken down — it was Forest Acres, South Carolina — and ended up getting pushed from the local jail cell down to County. And when I was going down to County, if you can imagine — and I'm in college at the time. So, what's going through my head is a couple of things. One, oh, my dad's going to kill me, because he's telling me all my life never go to jail. You know, he always �Mervin Jenkins 6 bragged about the fact his mom had ten kids and nobody never got arrested. And then, I'm also thinking, wow, I'm in school to be a teacher. In order to get a license, I got to have a clean record. So, that's two, three years' worth of college gone down the drain. And I'm in line. They got us all like handcuffed or whatever. And the lady who is doing intake, she's reading off the offenses that the folks have committed. So, she's like, "Mr. Graham, we got you for armed larceny. Go to the back." So, they'd go back into this big cell. "Mr. Rice, we got you for assault and battery. Go back to the cell." Then she goes, "Mr. Jenkins, we got you for..." And she looked at the paper and she looked at me. She smiled and said, "Come here." So, I walk up to the window, and she goes, "I'm going to do you a favor. I won't even read what we got you for. You just go in the back." So, she was trying to, you know, keep me from getting back there and being Jones and, who knows, beat up on by the guys who had some of the hard crime. So, I go in the back, and nervous as hell, I get back there in the big pen. It's about as big as this room, thirty guys all just, you know, it was a crazy three-day experience, but I get back there and this guy, who I didn't know but he knew me from music, he runs up and he's like, "Yo, Spec! What's up, man? What you doing back here?" I was like, "Yo, what you doing back here?" He said, "Man, you know, I was fighting these kids on the USC campus, man. Yo, brother," he tells this story. Then he comes back and he goes, "What happened to you?" I said, "Man, I was driving on twenty-six. I had two kilos of coke on me, son. They got me." You know, but it was peer pressure, man. You know, I wasn't going to tell the guy, "Hey, I stole some Black & Milds," after he told that war story, you know? So, peer �Mervin Jenkins 7 pressure is real. We still deal with it. It's one of the things that I'm passionate about talking to young people about, because for them, it's really, really hard, man. It's one thing when you haven't fully developed and you're dealing with people coming at you with sometimes the right thing, most times the wrong thing. How do you interact? How do you deal? So, anyway, I got off topic there, but, obviously, I love telling that story. Female Voice: So, my questions are more focused around your musical career. So, I'm just going to start with, you know, you told us the story about the garage and, you know, hearing the music or hearing the rap with your dad. But was that what sparked your inspiration to want to become a hip-hop artist? Mervin Jenkins: Yeah, it was something about Run DMC. When that song came across the radio, I can almost like yesterday hear the disc jockey introducing the song, saying it's a brand-new hit, and the beat, [beats rhythm] and then the guys coming in, "Two years ago, a friend of mine, asked me to say some MC rhymes, so I — ." And then he goes on and on. But anyway, I fell in love at that moment. That's — that was it for me. That was it. Yeah, absolutely. Female Voice: So, how did you start your journey into becoming a hip-hop artist after you figured out like, hey, this is something I'm really interested in? How did you get started on that? Mervin Jenkins: So, there's an art in hip-hop called freestyle. And some people really do it and some sort of don't do it and some don't do it at all but they say they're doing it. And what the freestyle is basically, with or without a beat, the music is playing, and you're rhyming in real time. So, in other words, I'm rhyming about what I'm seeing happening right now, just coming off the top of the dome. There's a few different terms �Mervin Jenkins 8 for it. It happened for me by accident, but it ended up being one of my biggest strong suits in the music business. So, I'm in middle school, and a cousin of mine from New York City had gotten kicked out of school in New York, came down South. He pretty much introduced the whole middle-school campus to marijuana. I mean, remember, Eutawville, South Carolina, we probably hadn't seen — most of us hadn't seen drugs at that point. But he came down, and he brought these things with him, but he also brought breakdancing and hip-hop music. And, again, it was new. Back then, the girls enjoyed singing it. I knew the girls got excited. The boys were passionate about it. And at that time, I had a little introduction myself, so I decided I was going to give it a shot. And I never forget. My cousin came to me and said, "Yo, man, we're doing these battles in the bathroom at lunch. I want you to join me tomorrow for a battle." And I'm like, yeah. You know, I've seen the battles, you know. They open the bathroom doors. You got one guy in the corner doing the beatbox, two guys squaring off rhyming against one another. So, I go home and write this rhyme thinking I'm going to show up tomorrow and me and my cousin, who was pretty famous for doing it, were going to battle two other people. Well, I get to the bathroom and the crowd is there. It's lunchtime. And he's like, "All right, you ready, man? You're going to go against me." And I just went, "Oh, snap," and literally forgot everything I wrote. Like, I got nervous, and everything I wrote just went out the window. So, the guy starts beatboxing and the crowd is looking at me like, okay, okay, okay. So, I just started rhyming, and I rhymed about the shoes he had on and — of course, I'm talking bad about it — and it happened to connect. And the crowd went �Mervin Jenkins 9 crazy. He didn't get a chance to rap that day. And that sort of launched my career as the freestyle MC and just never stopped. Female Voice: So, I have to ask, why the nickname Spectac, and what gave you that kind of inspiration to —. Mervin Jenkins: That's just the short of it. There's not a lot of rappers, even to this day, that have mastered the art of freestyle. And it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, you got rappers that are excellent writers. They write songs really, really well. But if they came in here right now and you told them to freestyle about what they're seeing here in the room, they'd probably be like, "Yo, yo, mic check. I'm sitting down in a class. I remember when I didn't pass. Yo, yo," and they'll sound just like verses of a real freestyle MC, which I'll give a demonstration hopefully when this wraps up today. Female Voice: Okay, so, what would you say is the ultimate message you are trying to say with your music and your lyrics? Mervin Jenkins: It's changed over the years. You know, I went from... I don't know where I started, even. I think it's safe to say I started more just I want you guys to know I'm an MC, the braggadocious, you know, I'll do this and I'll do that to you, to a more conscious... De La Soul. I'm calling some of the old groups from my era. A Tribe Called Quest, those guys, they came about what you can call a native tongue. Queen Latifah and those guys are more positive, sort of influence vibe in the rap music. And near the end of my career in it, it became just more of a mixture of have a good time and here are some things to think about. So, I sort of always walked that fine line, never really got into the gangster stuff, you know — I'm-a rob you, shoot you, blahsey-blah. It wasn't the life I was living. And, you know, never got into what was �Mervin Jenkins 10 referred to as the booty music, the Down-South shake-it-up kind of music. I just... stayed in the middle. Female Voice: How does, if at all, being a former principal translate into being a rapper? How do the two like balance each other out? Mervin Jenkins: It's weird thinking that there's a balance. I mean, when I came up doing this, people wouldn't even put education and hip-hop in the same sentence. And now, we've gotten to a point where I got a good friend, 9th Wonder. 9th is a traveling professor at... Harvard he does a class. North Carolina Central is where he started doing the class, but he does a hip-hop class at these big universities. You know, 9th was a guy that I introduced him to my manager at the time. My manager had a connection with Jay Z. Unbeknownst to us, Jay Z was a fan of 9th's music. The introduction happened, and now the guy has toured the world, has his own record label signed under a major label, and he is adamant about bringing hip-hop music and fusing it with academics and has done really well with it. For me, working as a school principal, for the most part, it was just the fact that young kids, experience working in school with majority black and brown students, that wasn't my career, but it was for one point. I started teaching here in Charleston at Alice Birney Middle, majority African-American student population at the time when I was there. I went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the high school in Chapel Hill, where it was majority white. And then to transition back to Horton Middle School in Chatham County, North Carolina, again, majority African-American, for black and brown students that really had this passion for the music, hip-hop specifically, it just sent a very strong message to those �Mervin Jenkins 11 guys, because, honestly, growing up, the guys that were involved in hip-hop music, either they made it in the game or they ended up saying, "Well, music didn't work out. I'm-a sell drugs." Or vice versa. And do some other things that probably weren't the right thing to be doing. And it never had a happy ending for an old guy in hip-hop for quite some time. And that started to change over the last several years. I mean, you really got hiphop music as growing up, as I like to say. So, a lot of the guys now that did it are doctors and lawyers and the list goes on and on. So, yeah. Female Voice: How do you feel about today's current rap music? Mervin Jenkins: Mm, mm, mm. I knew that was coming. So, when I started doing it, my dad would always come around and go, "Boy, what the hell are you doing? That ain't no real music. You need to listen to James Brown and Otis Redding." You know, and I got that for a long time, you know. And for a while, I started doing it with the younger generation. My son is involved with the music scene now. He's actually living between Atlanta and L.A., and he's touring with a guy by the name of Young Thug. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with Young Thug, but that's his entourage and he's with those guys. You know, supposedly the guy makes ninety-thousand dollars a show, and when you're doing several shows a month, that's not a bad living. You know, I think it's their time. You know, I fought that for a very long time. I used to do these songs, that ain't real hip-hop and all this other stuff. And the reality is, we aged out. You know, we still have our demographics that likes the Golden Age of hip-hop, the 90s era and so forth. But it's a new generation. And I just respect the fact that we've had our turn. You know, that's kind of where I'm at right now. �Mervin Jenkins 12 Female Voice: Do you currently have a favorite current rap artist, and then, who is your favorite of all time? Mervin Jenkins: I can't give you a favorite all-time. I mean, I was a huge fan, obviously, Run DMC. It kind of came in spells for me, so Run DMC... A Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock & CL Smooth... Common, and, obviously, a few other folks, Mos Def and so forth. But right now... I'm going to — I like Drake a lot. I like Drake a lot. I... what's his name. You guys help me out here. I'm embarrassed I don't even know this, but I know it, can't remember. West Coast guy with Dr. Dre. Young Buck, come on. Male Voice: [00:21:01] Mervin Jenkins: No, no, Young Buck. God! Male Voice: [00:21:08] Mervin Jenkins: I almost want to put the tape on Pause. This is bad, man. Yeah... God! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I would have never — that name was so far away from me just now. Kendrick Lamar. You know. And it's not necessarily buying an album and listening to the music. It's more about the message that they bring with the music. You know, they still — and Kendrick Lamar does a better job of it then Drake, but, you know, when you start talking the positive stuff, the sales usually don't go as well. And that's one of the reasons why we get the music we get, as far as I'm concerned, you know? People chase the money. They don't chase it for the passion, you know. Female Voice: So, this is my last question before I pass it on, and it's if you could do a collab song with any hip-hop artist from any time period, who would it be and why? Mervin Jenkins: I've done it. Big Daddy Kane. Big Daddy Kane was the Jay Z of my era. He was what Jay Z is today for that time. And when I got to record with Big �Mervin Jenkins 13 Daddy Kane, it was — I left him out as one of my influences, actually. He was a great influence and probably who I most coined my style after, if you look back and go over all of the artists I've encountered. But, yeah, recording with Big Daddy Kane was a milestone for me and just one of those things that you'll always remember. So, there it is. Yeah. Thank you. Male Voice: I've listened to a lot of your music on YouTube. Mervin Jenkins: Yeah. Male Voice: And it seems like you rap with a purpose. Mervin Jenkins: Yeah. Male Voice: I wanted to ask you that that is not a common theme that we see a lot, a lot of times in rap. So, I wanted to know, what exactly inspired you to take up this thing? Mervin Jenkins: Well, first of all, Rice, I think most artists rap with a purpose. Sometimes the purpose is, as I stated earlier, I want to get paid. You know, but there is a purpose behind it and all of the music, I would think. But are you trying to pass along a positive message would be the question. And it's hard, man. I mean, you know, if you're in the club and it's the booty-shake club, you don't necessarily want to hear a song about, you know, police killings or anything like that. You know, you want to hear turn up, you know, do this, do that, smoke out. That's just the way it is, you know. And, fortunately or unfortunately, hip-hop music ties right into that pipeline, man. I mean, you can't even get a McDonald's commercial nowadays without a hip-hop beat behind it. So, personally, I just, it's what I'm passionate about. I think if you do something that a young person, especially, can listen to and be influenced to go out and do �Mervin Jenkins 14 something bigger and better, then you're making a difference, man. And, you know, who doesn't want to leave the world just a little better than they found it? That's kind of my motto in life right now, you know, leaving here and being able to say I did a few things, made a few tweaks that's going to make it a whole lot better for the young folks coming up. Male Voice: You mentioned how rap has changed, but you didn't really give your own opinion on it, so I want to know, do you think it's a change for the better or for the worse? Mervin Jenkins: I really don't have an answer for that one. So, here's the thing. I have to put it in perspective. When I was coming up, rap music wasn't played on the majority of radio stations. Today you can't go to a country station without hearing a country rap song coming on. You know, I came up in the time when there was probably one station in your area that you can hear a rap song on. So, with that in mind, and being in the Bible Belt, usually those rap songs were pretty clean-cut. Now, was there bad, negative rap out there? Absolutely. There was gangsta rap before I even knew it was gangsta rap, you know? It didn't start on the West Coast. They were doing it on the East Coast, too. But it was there. It just didn't — I mean, we didn't have the social connections that we have now. A person like Sir Mix-a-Lot - do your research guys and girls. He had a big hit, "My Posse's On Broadway." This guy became a platinum-selling artist on one coast. We didn't know about him over here until years later, but that's just the way it worked back then. So, back to your question, I think the negative element, if you want to call it that, of hip-hop was always there. It just didn't get the attention that it's getting now. I mean, �Mervin Jenkins 15 obviously, again, being more connected, people being into the stuff they're into, it's a whole lot easier to put it out there. So, I think it's the same. I just think the way we go about putting it out, marketing, advertising, etc., etc. is a whole lot different now. Yeah. Male Voice: How do you feel rap themes and educational themes contradict each other, if there is a contradiction? Mervin Jenkins: Yeah, the contradiction lies in what we believe it to be. We've always looked at education as this great thing that elevates us to the next level. I happen to agree with that. But we've always stereotyped rap and hip-hop, the culture of hip-hop as this negative thing. You know, oh, these guys and girls are from the projects, don't have a good chance of succeeding in life, probably going to have tons of children and won't take care of them, etc., the list goes on and on. That's been tagged to hip-hop music, unfortunately. And I've always, knowing how passionate folks were about the music, and, I mean, even white kids. At Chapel Hill High School, where it was majority white, I had kids, two I can think of right now, two white boys that are still in the music business right now. One is living over in Korea and has a big career as a Korean hip-hop artist, you know, and another is right still in Chapel Hill, but he produces and engineers for some of the biggest cats that come out of that area as far as music is concerned. So, you know, you sort of, when you think about the two, I like to, in my own world, say that some great things have happened when I think about education and hiphop coexisting. Great things have happened, and I'm continuing to make it happen. Even going out now, when I speak with young folks, I talk about the fact that, guess what, if you can take hip-hop music and tweak it in a way where kids can attach to it in class and �Mervin Jenkins 16 learn something, then go for it. A perfect example, when I was at Alice Birney, I taught art history. And I started making comparisons with some of the hip-hop artists at the time that were still big, and the kids ate it up, man and were able to connect with the work. So, I'm trying to remember this, but I think I did a comparison of the Renaissance artists Michelangelo, and I compared him to Tupac Shakur. And I talked about the fact that Michelangelo, like Tupac, loved the nightlife. This guy partied all the time. Like Tupac, Michelangelo died very young in life. I mean, he didn't live to be an old man, just like Tupac Shakur, you know. And then make the comparisons of Biggie Smalls and Leonardo da Vinci, you know, and just being a man of many styles and flavor. It was always something to connect with the students. You got to want to do it, man. You know, I mean, somebody else can take what I just said and put a negative spin on it and run with it, but I've always had that approach of let's make it positive, let's make it good for the youth. Male Voice: It's clear that one of your main goals is to educate or throughout or through teaching. So, how do you feel you have been successful at that goal? Mervin Jenkins: You know, I tell teachers all the time, you really don't know. I mean, right now, you guys got a teacher that you're working with, and at the end of the day, you know, what are you going to do? That's going to determine the success, you know? When you guys can shoot a text message or get on Facebook or whatever, Instagram, and shoot a message back and say, "Hey, Professor, I just want to say, man, thanks for doing that musical study we did that semester. Believe it or not, I'm married to somebody now who is big into jazz music, and it was kind of cool being able to have a �Mervin Jenkins 17 conversation." You know, when you send a message like that back, then you got us going, wow, I never would have thought, but way to go. You know, it's little small things like that. You know, I didn't make my first trip overseas until I was forty years old. And you know what inspired me? I just told you I was teaching art at Alice Birney. I was teaching art history. So, I'm talking about the Renaissance Period like I lived it, and I enjoy that period of music, art, and etc., etc., that period in time. But I never had gone to Europe. Well, one day, I'm at home in Atlanta, Georgia, and I get an email on Facebook. And it's my boy Brandon from middle school that I taught. And he's now in the Navy. And Brandon is like, "Hey, Mr. Jenkins, I don't know if you remember me, man, but I just wanted to say thank you, man. I'm out here stationed in Rome," or wherever he was in Italy," and I had a chance to go by the Sistine Chapel, man. And it was just like you described it to us in school, man." So, I'm sitting there with my wife laughing, going, "You know, the irony of this, I've never been to the Sistine Chapel, you know?" And she was like, "Well, you know what? Fortieth birthday is coming up. Let's go." And we did. You know, and, again, I was inspired by him, you know? But that was a reflection of putting some good out in the world. Here's a man now serving his country, and he took a minute to go back fifteen, twenty years and say, "Let me find Mr. Jenkins on Facebook and send him an email, because I can't believe I'm in the Sistine Chapel, man, as much as he talked about that." That's when you know you've made a difference, you know? And sometimes, you just don't find out. I don't think it's in our cards to really get a big pat on the back, "Hey, man, great job," you know? When you're in education, you don't go in looking for that. You know, you just go in, you do the job. If somebody comes �Mervin Jenkins 18 back and says, "Hey, man, I appreciate what you did," great. If not, just keep planting the seeds and, you know, don't look back. Male Voice: Thank you. Mervin Jenkins: Yeah. Female Voice: I did have one final question, and this is kind of just a random one that I just remembered. We were spit-balling and talking about the questions we wanted to ask you and one of the biggest ones was, when you were a principal or even now as an educator, do you ever have students come up and try to rap-battle you? Mervin Jenkins: So, that's a funny one. I guess I will know that my time is really up the day that this doesn't work in my favor. Every time I speak to a group of students, high-school students, particularly, I walk in and I say, "Hey, I'm Mervin Jenkins. I used to be a school principal," dah, dah, dah, and they're all sitting like this, you know. Yeah. And then I go, "And I also rap." And then they kind of go... and they start laughing. [exaggerated laugh] And I'm like, "Yeah. I bet some of you rap, right here in the audience. I tell you what. I'm going to rap later on, and anybody here that wants to go after me, feel free to do so." And by that time, some of the boys and girls are like hitting their favorite rapper in the audience, like, "Yeah, you're going to get him, man. You're going to get him. You're going to get him." And then I rhyme at the end. And then I look at that person and go, "You ready?" They're like, "No, I'm good." And that's how you know you still got it. [Audience laughs] Mervin Jenkins: So, that day that the young man or young lady gets up and gets up and says, "Yeah, I got you," and grabs the mic and knock me out of the box, then I'll �Mervin Jenkins 19 know it's time to bow down and gracefully exit. But until then, we're rocking and rolling. Thank you. Female Voice: Well, that's all the questions that we had, so I think we're going to open it up to everyone else and let them ask anything that they need to ask you. Mervin Jenkins: Talk to me, folks. KWT: Yeah, shout it out. I don't know if the mic will get back to you. Male Voice: Sorry. [00:33:51] a rapper over there. What's his name? Mervin Jenkins: It's Ryan Miyami, but what does he go by? That's a great question, man. Let me get back to you on that one. I have to go on — I'm not even on Facebook anymore. Good God. Yeah, I have to look it up for you, but, yeah, his real name is Ryan Miyami, and he's from Chapel Hill. But it's he and one other guy. They got a little duo thing going on and getting a lot of tour spin over in that side of the world. Male Voice: Is he Korean? Mervin Jenkins: No, no, no, no. He's a white boy from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Yeah, he just graduated high school, decided he wasn't going to college. He was going to jump straight into the music, and that's what he did, you know. I'm sure his mom and dad are probably looking at me sideways, like you started this, Mr. Jenkins, but, you know, the guy had a passion and he went for it. And my thing is, if you're going to do it, do it while you're young. Yeah. KWT: Other questions out there? Mervin Jenkins: Don't hold back, folks. Questions are questions. You know, if it's floating, ask the question. KWT: You told me a great story about a student, an encounter with a student at �Mervin Jenkins 20 the Cat's Cradle. Mervin Jenkins: Yeah. KWT: Do you remember? Mervin Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the Cat's Cradle is a popular venue in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, all genres of music, more rock music, but they do a hip-hop thing every now then. They push a lot of groups out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina through the Cat's Cradle. And one year, when I was assistant principal at the high school, I was asked to open up for KRS-One. And he's one of the original motivational, positive, black power, however you want to put it. And I go to the show and I'm onstage doing my freestyle set and the way it works — I'll do it today, as a matter of fact — I'll get one person and ask them to just, when the music drops, move around and point at anybody or anything they want to. So, I get this one guy to do that, and as he's going through the crowd, keep in mind, I'm performing, so half of the crowd is my students. Like, they just snuck in. They shouldn't even have been there, but it was like, oh, Mr. Jenkins is performing tonight, yo. We're going. So, as the guy is walking around pulling people out, somebody up front is smoking a joint and he grabs the joint, my point person, and like passes it over to me while I'm in mid freestyle. So, I'm thinking quick, going I can't puff on a dang joint, assistant — so, I literally, as he's passing me the joint, I go, "Me smoke that, dude, come on, be sensible. Half of the crowd knows I'm a high-school assistant principal." And the crowd just went crazy and he kind of like took the joint and eased out of the scenery. And I laughed with KRS-One backstage and said, "You know what? For three seconds, smoking weed wasn't cool." You know, like that's — but that's the art of the �Mervin Jenkins 21 freestyle, man. And you got to be careful freestyling. I mean, sometimes you slip and say the wrong thing. I had quite the story with that one. Yeah, I can't even share that one. I'll tell you that one off the books a little later. All right. Questions, questions. Mervin Jenkins: Yes? Male Voice: Do you feel like growing up in this area made it more difficult to — . Mervin Jenkins: Hell, yeah! Yes, yes, yes, yes! Great question. Bible Belt, for one. I had a friend who used to promote music for some of the big labels up North. Keep in mind, when I came out doing hip-hop music, South Carolina, North Carolina, we didn't have a sound. And when I say we didn't have a sound, this is what I mean. New York, you had the New York rappers. You know who they were. West Coast, you had N.W.A. and all the groups that sort of fell in that category, which we call gangsta rap. Down South, Miami, you had Luke from 2 Live Crew, booty-popping, you know, Down South music. We didn't have a sound. And the promoter said to me one day — I'll never forget this. He said, "Merv... the record industry doesn't want the Carolinas to have a sound." In other words, we don't want you to have a popular group come out of the Carolinas. And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because you guys are the sampling ground for everything. They can take any genre of music, bring it to the Carolinas, and you guys will give a good feedback on yes or no, this can fly or it can't fly." In other words, you couldn't take a New York record, go to the West Coast back then, and play it in the West Coast to try to get a response on if it's good or not, because they were just going to say, "No, that's not good, man. This is our music." And vice versa. You couldn't take a West Coast record, an N.W.A. record and go to New York, for �Mervin Jenkins 22 the most part, and play it and have people go, "You like this?" "Nah, man. That's whack!" And same down South. But the Carolinas was open ground. But because it was that, it definitely made it difficult for somebody coming out of the Carolinas to make it happen. And quite frankly, if you think about it, we haven't had a platinum-selling artist born and raised in the Carolinas to this day. Now, North Carolina, you got your boy J. Cole that came out of Fayetteville there, under Jay Z now. But other than that, you know, your Petey Pablo quick thing that went, take your shirt off, hit it around like a helicopter, I mean, you know, that was five minutes of fame. But just that consistent this is our artist, yeah, man, great question. Female Voice: I had one. Was there a moment where, during your music career, where you kind of stepped back and was like, I made it, kind of thing? Was there like one big like this-is-it moment for you? Mervin Jenkins: Working with 9th Wonder. That was a hard pill to swallow when it didn't just go over the top like I wanted it to. I had a friend in Chapel Hill that said to me, "I got a producer, Spec, I want you to meet." And he took me to an apartment in Raleigh. A few guys were staying there. And upstairs was this guy, and he was making beats and, you know, he was living paycheck to paycheck. And it was 9th Wonder. And at the time, he wasn't the 9th Wonder that, if you do the research, we all know and love today. And I said to him, after hearing his music, I went, "Dude, you are the next Pete Rock of production," which was the best compliment you could probably give somebody in hip-hop, and he went, "Aw, no. I don't think so, man." I said, "Yo, I know a few people. Let me get your tape, and let's talk." And I got his music or a CD and I gave it to �Mervin Jenkins 23 my manager. My manager had a connection to Jay Z. Come to find out, Jay Z was a fan of his music. He didn't notice, but my boy was like, well, my manager, his connect said, "Yo, I'm doing The Black Album with Jay Z and don't you guys know 9th Wonder?" And we're like, "Yeah." He said, "Well, every time Jay Z goes into the booth, he plays his music as inspiration, man." I was like, "Really?" He was like, "Yeah. Like, can we make this happen?" So, a week later, my manager and I fly to New York. Jay Z and Beyoncé are in the studio. They meet for the first time, and the rest was history. Two days later, he was recording on Jay Z's Black Album, the song came out, the royalties from that song alone changed his life, and now, like I said, I mean, he's working around the country and around the world doing stuff, you know. So, yeah. Good, good stuff, man. Good stuff. KWT: What can you tell us about — [00:42:10 Audio loss] Mervin Jenkins: Hold that — hold that thought. Don't. Male Voice: You were talking about how there was like different sounds for different parts of the country, West Coast, New York. What were some of the differences that picked up through each [00:42:25]? Mervin Jenkins: New York was all about lyricism. So... I'm trying to dig back in the crates here. You'd hear a rapper like... Nas, for example, you know, when you think New York. And Nas is truly a lyricist. Like, you know he's passionate about connecting the words and how to put it together and make it work. I mean... Pete Rock & CL Smooth, you know, one of my favorites, you know. CL Smooth, you know, "I reminisce �Mervin Jenkins 24 for a spell, or should I say a payback, twenty-three years ago to keep it on track, a birth of a child on the eighth of October, a toast, but my granddaddy came sober, count all the fingers and toes, now I suppose you hope the little black boy grows, grows." Lyricism, connecting the words. You go to the West Coast, and think about Tupac. As big as Tupac was, his music hits you here. You know. But it didn't really get lyrical as far as connecting words and — it was, you know, you listen to a song like "Dear Mama," you know, "Even though you was a black queen, mama, never really ever seen no drama." It was just a cadence he had, a delivery that, again, it didn't focus on the lyricism, but it hit you here in the heart. And that was the difference. When you went down South, if anybody is familiar with Luke from 2 Live Crew, I mean, these were the guys that took it all the way to the Supreme Court with their album Banned in the U.S.A., because the government came in and said that this music is too raunchy. And if you know Luke, his music was simply about... get naked and let's have some fun. Go listen to any of his music right now, and that's what it's about. You know, everything — I can't even repeat the lyrics from the songs, because it was that raunchy. But, man! You talk about sound good in a club? When you're in a club, hot Miami dancing and that song comes — any one of his records come on, the dance floor went crazy. And that was their sound. But, again, based on where you were from, if you went with that Down South up to New York, people would look at you like, "Man, come on, man. What — that's whack!" You know, and eventually it all became a good melting pot, because other �Mervin Jenkins 25 places, you had Chicago eventually come in with their sound. You had New Orleans come in, Master P and the Hot Boyz and those guys. Different places started bringing their sound to the table. Texas came in with their sound. So, eventually, it sort of all came together. And it's not as... definitive as it once was, but it still exists to some degree. Yeah, great question. KWT: This is kind of a continuation of that question. Is there anything you can say about a Lowcountry or a Charleston sound? Mervin Jenkins: Yeah. So... the Geechee, the Geechee sound. One of the big problems in hip-hop for us coming out of the South was, for a long time, because we were the testing ground — and this is my theory — we never defined a South Carolina or a Lowcountry, for that matter, hip-hop sound. We spent our time trying to either mimic the New York rappers or the Up North rappers, trying to mimic the West Coast rappers, trying to mimic the Down South rappers. We never developed our own sound. And looking back, that probably could have been the biggest reason for missing the boat, outside of what I said about the whole testing-ground theory, is record labels wanted the next thing. They wanted the next hot thing. So, if I'm here in South Carolina and I'm doing a record and I sound just like QTip from A Tribe Called Quest, which I was compared to quite often in those days, it doesn't do any good to take it to somebody and say, "Hey, sign this guy, because he's like — ." And a matter of fact, that happened. That happened. I'm friends with the comedian Chris Rock. Chris Rock took my demo to Russell Simmons, Russell Simmons that owns Def Jam. And this was, I mean, I was probably barely twenty-something years old back then. But his response was, "Russell played it. He thought you had skills. But he was like, �Mervin Jenkins 26 'He sounds just like Q-Tip. We already got a Q-Tip.'" So, looking back, maybe if I had added a little — like added a little Geechee dialect to it, you know, but, honestly, back then, that was considered embarrassing in the rap game, because people would automatically go, "Oh, that dude is from down South. He can't rap. Down South folks ain't got no skills." So, I avoided that and tried to sound like up North. You know, so I don't think we ever got our taste of the pie. Now, there were some great groups that were making things happen in the Lowcountry. One of the ones that I worked directly with was called The Flavor MCs or they went by the name Flavor. And The Flavor... what you guys probably would know them for, if you're into South Carolina history, they're logo was a Confederate flag in the African colors, red, black, and green. And it had some sign, "The past is the past, The Flavor is the future." That was sort of their whole marketing strategy. And some young girl wore the tee shirt to some high school in Summerville, got suspended. It made national news. That was their claim to fame. The tee shirt blew up. The group didn't blow up as big as the tee shirt, but the tee shirt issue, I think, ended up going to the Supreme Court or something, like it was really, really big. And that was the guys behind that, The Flavor. And the same thing, I mean, these guys had Geechee accents, most of them. Some were very close friends and family of mine. And it was three MCs. They got a major recording record dealer, probably the first hip-hop group to get a major deal. Dick Griffey, or whoever the guy was back then that signed them, and it just didn't take off completely. They got the deal. We all felt like, oh, this is it, man. It's about to happen. But it didn't just skyrocket to what we see some of the stars experiencing today. Yeah. �Mervin Jenkins 27 But that was my personal little experience there, Kieran. Male Voice: If somebody asked you to define hip-hop, how would you respond? Mervin Jenkins: hip-hop is a culture. You know... just think about it that way. When you say hip-hop, it's the way you speak. It's that slang. It's that swag. It's dancing, different forms of dancing, breakdancing being one of the biggest. It's DJing, the art of DJing, getting up on the ones and twos and cutting and scratching. It's the MCing element of it, the rapping side of it. The artwork, graffiti artwork. Like, it's a culture. It's really, truly the B-boy, B-girl culture is what it is. That's how I describe it. Mervin Jenkins: Yes. Male Voice: So, nowadays in 2017, you'll have people from like New York City, Charlotte, North Carolina, or like Atlanta, Georgia all listening to a bunch of West Coast rappers, but that definitely wouldn't be the case back in the 90s. So, do you think there was a special like event or a time that kind of shaped that transition? Mervin Jenkins: You know, I remember getting a phone call the night that Biggie Smalls was murdered. You know, that whole West Coast/East Coast beef, Tupac and Biggie Smalls. And... while a lot of negative publicity came out of that, it made both coasts pay close attention to what the other was doing. And at first, it was more of a feuding, we don't like you, don't bring your music here. But I think eventually, we — you heard the saying: Time heals everything. I think eventually, people just really started to appreciate the fact that we had two very talented artists that lost their lives. Instead of continuing to carry on that brutal back and forth, what can we do to honor these men but also keep the culture of the music going? And I, you know, again, that's my perspective, but I think it was during that time �Mervin Jenkins 28 and place and era that things just started to change a little bit for the better. Even though that was probably some of the most heightened-tension time, eventually, when the dust all settled, there was a little rules coming out of the concrete from all that. So. Great question. Thank you. Anybody else? Mervin Jenkins: Come one time. Going two times. Going three times. Anybody else on the floor want to say anything right now? [Speaks fast like an auctioneer] Look to the left. Look to my right. And we are sold. All right. Here's what we're going to do. I am going to find a nice instrumental. We're going to do two parts to this, since we got a little time. The first is going to be something that's written, and I need to connect. Come on. And then, after the written, we will... look at the little freestyle piece. Just give me a second. Let me go to Music, Albums, and Piece. [mutters to self] Um, Playlist. [Instrumental music track plays] Yeah, that works. [Stops music] All right. So... this first one I'm going to do for you guys, this is something that I wrote. I don't know exactly what year it was, but President Bush was president and, well, Bush was the president. President Bush was president. And my sister, who was in the Reserve at the time, I think she was doing her second tour over in Iraq with the Army Reserves. She's a full-time nurse now, but this was trying times, and I remember where I was at with my sister being over there, my little sister, and is she going to be okay. And out of the frustration, the concern, the fear, I wrote this song, and I think I got the — this wasn't the beat that it went with, but I think it works with this. [Instrumental music track plays] �Mervin Jenkins 29 And it's called "War of the World," by the way. Yeah. All right. "I ain't vote for Bush. I ain't vote for Bush. I ain't vote. I ain't vote for Bush. I ain't vote for Bush. I ain't vote. Nope, I didn't vote, yo. I ain't vote for Bush, but we got him. I ain't pull a gun on King, but we shot him. The whole world is rock bottom. It gets about as ghetto as Harlem. 10:00 news, Showtime at the Apollo. Watch, follow my lead, harder to breathe, ozone layer falling into the seas. Till the birds in the skies, to the lands and trees, what's worse, we got it for free. I guess it's harder for me to see my folks, beautiful folks, some strung out with dope and getting life on Death Row, some in denial, some saying it's not so, some still praying while preaching the gospel. And every takeover now is extremely hostile. And peace is about as rare as summers in Moscow. I guess that the way of the world. It's the way of the world. The world's at war. And, yo, that Twin Tower thing must have shook your block. If you was West Coast, it shook your block. Took firefighters and cops, young dreams brought to a stop, had a war brought right to our docks, the great American melting pot. New York, you forgot, Ground Zero, home to thousands of heroes and heroines, both women and men. As I watch Channel 10, we still bringing them in. But we're still sending men to war. Many die for their country, others lose a limb, come home and go hungry. On the street, eight million stories to weep, eight million reasons I can't sleep. It's like War of the World. I'm Orson Welles. Little kids seem lost themselves. They was born in a heaven tossed to Hell. Of course it's real. In Third World countries, kids starving for meals. And �Mervin Jenkins 30 it's not like it's part of the deal. This part is for real. I'm—a hold faith and keep God as my shield. It's not like it's part of the deal. This part if for real. I'm—a hold faith and keep God." And that was "War of the Worlds" for me, folks. [Applause] Mervin Jenkins: And that's an old record. We're going back to the... to the Iraq War, so a long time ago, but, again, that's going back to what I was passionate about, what inspired me to write. They were — at a certain age, the real-life events sort of kick in, you know. I'm sure if I was fifteen, the rhyme might not have been like that, but where I was in my life and what was happening around me, that's what was important. So, for this next track, and I got to find a good track for this one... I'm going to give you guys a little sample of the freestyle, a little short and sweet, if I can find the beat that I'm looking for. Actually, I think I know where it's at. Yep. Oh, not available. That doesn't help. All right. So, I have to go back to... my little plethora of things to rap to. Here it is. All right. So... are you going to help me out with this one? Female Voice: I can. Mervin Jenkins: All right, here's the rules of engagement. First, I need to find the beat. Let's go — you know what? Let's go with... my boy Nas. All right. Word up. All right. That is a tough one. So, when the beat starts, give me a few seconds to nod my head and get my rhythm and then I'm going to go like this. Female Voice: Okay. �Mervin Jenkins 31 Mervin Jenkins: And when I do that, I need you — you're going to need a little room, because you're going to have to move around the room. But I want you, when I give the signal, to just move and whoever — I got a little mic cord here, so I can move with you a little bit. And I need to get my volume up a little bit. KWT: Do we need another mic for anything? Mervin Jenkins: No, I don't think so. This should be good. But I want you to just move and grab anybody, point at anything, I mean, anything, anything, and I'm just going to follow with the rhyme, okay? But let me get my... [Beat track plays] Mervin Jenkins: All right. One two, one two? This is the freestyle part of it. I'm going to stand up for this one. [Beat track continues] Mervin Jenkins: All right. I'm ready. Let's go. All right. It's Spectac, y'all. Check it out. Yo. Grab the pen. I don't know where to begin. Freestyle raps that just never end. A cap on the table, last name Rice. When I pick up the mic, they like to say I'm nice. Yo. I grab the microphone. Yo, I got to do it. My wife just flew back from London. That's in Europe. You all know how the flows get tight. When I grab the mic and the flows ignite, the name's Spec. Dark black, do it exact. Yo, soldier, I hope there's water in that. If not, it could be trouble. That's a fact. When I come through, roll through, no holding back. Spectac. I'm nice with mine, like to rhyme. Do yourself a favor, dawg, take your time. Place the order, prepare for a slaughter. Old-school camera, new-school camcorder, a jean jacket, I knock it back and forth like a tennis racket. Other MCs, they �Mervin Jenkins 32 can't hack it. Spectac. I'm not invisible. I'm not looking through the window but I still see the Citadel. Nice big flows, the rhymes on point, MCs in the game like that's my joint. I don't quit. This is it. Watch me spit. Real rap drawl, y'all, this is it. Best in the game, Spectac, you know the name. I came with the flame, still get busy. Is that a pair of scissors? Don't ask, who is he? Good for cutting. Yo, you ain't saying nothing. When I grab the microphone, it's like E.F. Hutton. Why? Because everybody's listening. If I get your car keys, then you're probably missing 'em. As far as I'm concerned, yo, you got to have vision. Mm. Hop in the car, then go for a drive. It's not ninety-five. I'm staying alive. I got the iPhone, but your carrier, that's not the new one. When it comes to rhyme, I just got to do one. I'm nice with mine, and that's a fact. I love to tell my folks that I'm—a be right back. That's the Nas instrumental. Man, I'm large. And I love to see him dressed up in camouflage. Um, up in the woods, I'm bumping the jungle. I'm a Flash Gordon fan fighting Ming from Mongo. You can stop now. Don't skip my classes. I see that dude smiling while rocking his glasses. He got the water in the palm tree on his cup. It's Spectac. Pass the mic. I'm—a blow it up. Yo, I'm a rapper, not a rhymer, and when they ask where Spectac's from, tell them South Carolina, -lina, -lina, -lina, -lina... [fades out] [Applause and cheers] Mervin Jenkins: And that, my friend, is the art of the freestyle, true freestyle. All right. Look-um. Female Voice: I have a question. Mervin Jenkins: Yes. �Mervin Jenkins 33 Female Voice: Earlier you said that your cousin from New York introduced you to the music. Mervin Jenkins: Yes. Female Voice: I am wondering, where these words, where are they coming from? Who, you know, where the words are coming books, movies? Mervin Jenkins: So, I want to make sure I got the question right. Basically, everything that's happening with hip-hop right now, you're saying where is it coming from? Female Voice: When you were a teenager. Mervin Jenkins: Oh, okay. Female Voice: I am wondering the stories that you have in your mind. Who put those things there? Mervin Jenkins: That's a very good question. Now, I believe that we all got a little rhythm in us, you know. The funny thing, because I can rap, people automatically assume I can dance, too. My wife laughs, because whenever somebody mentions me dancing, she goes, "Man, you know dang well you can't dance." And I can't. I don't have the rhythm on the dance floor. But where that came from, that knack to put words together, I don't know. Maybe my mom. My mom, she still writes poems to this day. And somehow, I think that rubbed off on me, you know. But for me, the poetry writing turned into rhyming, because there was a time where I tried writing poetry, but I only did it because I saw my mom doing it. Oh, that's cool. Roses are red, violets are blue, guess what, baby, I love you. Okay, you know. And all of a sudden, while that was happening, while I was �Mervin Jenkins 34 going through that phase, I was introduced to this music. And it's like, wow, I'm still rhyming, but I'm doing it to a beat, and it's not just my mama saying good job. It's these pretty girls I want to talk to. I'm going to give this a try. And that sort of started something. And, again, as you grow older, it takes on new meaning and the reason you do it, what you're passionate about, it just — it's the butterfly effect, you know? It transforms and transforms and it keeps happening until you can no longer do it. My transformation now is I still do it, but I do it for younger people, and I do it to basically tell a story and send a message. So, again, twenty years ago, that wasn't the reason I was doing it. But, anyway, I hope I answered your question. Yeah. Whew. Anybody? Before we sign off. KWT: When you go home to Eutawville, are you Spectac the rapper, or are you Mervin Jenkins, an educator? Mervin Jenkins: Mervin Jenkins. Now, the funny thing is, believe it or not, for a long time in South Carolina, you could literally go to Columbia, and if anybody was involved with hip-hop, you could say, "Yo, you know Spectac?" And it would be — now, that won't happen now, so don't try it now. They'll come back, "Who?" But, I mean, up until about ten years ago, the name just stayed in the circuit. My favorite story was 9th Wonder went over to... it probably was London, but he was overseas doing a show. And when he gets on the plane, there's a group of highschool students that are getting on the plane to fly back to the States to do a — visit New York or whatever they were doing. And he said they recognized him and they went, "9th Wonder!" So, as they're talking to him, they all go, "Yo, is it true, Spectac is a highschool principal?" You know, it was relevant for them, because they were in high school, �Mervin Jenkins 35 and these are all kids from Europe, you know? And he's like, "Yeah, man." And he was so excited. When he got back to the States, he called me from the airport, like, "Yo, I'm with these young high-school kids, man, and they were asking about you, you know." Like, wow, you know. So, you just never know. And another extraordinary moment from London, my wife never got into my music. She's real big on — or used to be — Tupac was her man. You know, that was her thing: Tupac. I sounded nothing like Tupac, so she wanted nothing to do with my music. We go overseas on that fortieth-birthday trip, and I had a fan from — he's a good friend now — from Facebook who lived in London and Paris but always bought my music, man. And every time something came out, he wanted to know when it was coming out. And when I got to London, it hit me. I said, "Whoa. My man Bautiste lives here. Let me give him a buzz." I was like, "Bautiste, man, it's Spec. Sorry to call you last-minute. I'm in London. I'm only here for the day." He was like, "Yo! Where are you right now?" I said, "Oh, the wife and I are about to get on this double-decker tour bus and do a tour." He said, "I'm coming! I'm coming on tour with — ." And dude shows up, hops on the tour bus with us, and it was kind of weird, because he just like looking at me for like the first twenty minutes. And finally, he looked at my wife and he said, "You don't understand. I learned to speak English listening to his music." Like, he had been following me for years, man. And that was just a humbling moment, and it was also the moment my wife kind of went, "Wow. I didn't think your music was touching people like that." So, anyway, man, great stories, great times. Live your life, folks. It's real. Live your life. Anybody else? I'm about to run to Hardee's and get me one of them good biscuits, �Mervin Jenkins 36 because I'm hungry. Kerry, man, Maria, thank you guys both for doing this. Anytime I get a chance to speak with young people, and you guys are — y'all got your hands full, man, over the next few years. And I'm going to tell everybody right now, I appreciate your service. Whenever I travel, I say that to soldiers. I don't get as many first-class seats as I used to get, but if I saw somebody in uniform and I was traveling and I had a first-class seat, they got my seat. I mean, you know, I hate the idea of having to fight, but I also like the idea of being ready to do it if it comes down to it. Hopefully you guys will have a career where there's all peace and we can just push through this thing and move on and become old and gray like myself, but I do thank you for where you're at right now, what you're doing, putting yourselves out there like that. I mean, there's really nothing else to say about it. My sister, like I said, she did Reserve, two tours overseas. I think the third time she went, she volunteered, wanted to go back, and it's just something about that, man. So, thank you, men and women, for doing what you do. And thank you for having me here today. KWT: Thank you, Mervin. [Applause] End of recording. Edited Ml 5/18/17 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/9c5dbe541f87d16a5a1d1bb991dda08c.mp3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=oJ9sSgvTvgsIfj65s1fsSd0hlu7aqVxKGZ%7Et0QUvBw5KNCSsn1l0g535ibGGKetzRwq73BcLd8A8emN90Efi5QIY7LDPx%7EtGi7URrJH4rua60IwScGZPIf2Dvzd0M4emRqSsD0unSQKh2dxtrRd5%7EOg9ETJKDmatN80pY-Deklh8%7E2tjWr55zrTValAG%7E1vMFVBKmFMM%7Eql3OR93dEDx4b-I-Kw3IApY%7ERkdgVyMlPh1mmrLKYvnHaxf5IK0WHenL4olg61juhjz7Qm7SWtFxmuL6PUe%7EKpQKGGcx%7Eo-r%7EDRZR7e4viHZ7U3sjT-KRzKsYzfdd8B52fCtHZp2ve6uQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 02076bba481b43df7a50ea738c3b0538 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/02fc730a0eb2217d4c11fd3a5910c069.jpg?Expires=1792627200&Signature=D5UoXCLprBeNzsC4jVEMgQM5eFi9e1cG4d4evlkIPu-DToXH-ETT1R2y12tkelQhuwF3ESnytx6p2hF6DNeuIKuGAWsx73n9lKwLuSBj2bWIS5tuqrDsOmhvR6DSfUQkbj8tfZXQBgi8GOhePtnIVfDd1NDbHwMo2a3FG3sojgQEgGuFbbfrbMU7JtMRrij7SiCw7MVN0rxdQdbEO3SwYclunJ6QGDGeau2%7EiYocuv3b4zFib6obblOcvYiDh42Q5t4FogDyjaaaLhhRDG9NgldPr7txCvWIq2CtvYRSRxaRRJdCHW%7EVc%7EdDavGA5wLtYc8MRrMoxR1nvPA2ueXg2w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3fb8f8d9665042ea973d8e1fa5cb1be0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Brown, Laura R. Graham, Ra'Shaud J. Rice, Michael L. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jenkins, Mervin Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 9 minutes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Mervin Jenkins, interviewed by Laura R. Brown, Ra'Shaud J. Graham and Michael L. Rice, 16 March, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource African American musicians African American musicians--South Carolina African American teachers Description An account of the resource Musician and educator Mervin Antonio Jenkins, also known as Spec the Spectacular for his talent at rhyming and freestyle, was born in Eutawville, South Carolina in 1972. He is the first child of Mary, a schoolteacher, and Melvin Jenkins, an auto mechanic worker. It was in his father’s garage that Jenkins listened to Run DMC, "Sucker MC's" for the first time. Later, he would learn more about rap music and culture with his cousin from New York. In the interview, Jenkins reflects on his career as a musician and as an educator who uses rap to engage young people. He shares the challenges and rewards of his career, stating that recording with Big Daddy Cane was one of his proudest moments. He discusses the evolution of rap music and its styles and names his favorite artists. When asked about a particular Charleston/Carolinas sound, he argues that the Carolinas never developed their own rap sound and style because it was not functional for the music industry. At the end of the interview, he performs “War of the Worlds” and freestyles, responding to the audience prompts. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/617 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/ae9dab81e8da344930d6f858cf8d4402.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=YuLx-t0t-n1%7E2-311GH9iue1Vhqi4Ea25IzirRea-FgLpXMIW9e5W737C9NWS5Z5iOJfBIEBaulq4vzJPgylgaXTxtGrtc0fVoWs8YdsUOb7f7nSnj8ia%7EvXT6L9G4G-z7h7oDpWAMyNbBAQhe2hTxy90nwti6OOL7yIGvSi0Mkeud3kDC4xjeIba5VpG9zQ7XpkT0HfLVxe5jA%7EWOSjf7DoZYTBZVD51QKMATsk5mNOjZ8SXkRLKZ1ZKe6MsL5osAJv1gnx9oNAoV2ZaHXLMBbI5piCHX3s%7ERA28ByWmPV1iJebqGlFFAMzIUno5WABkBiM7MONYgY27sW-07d0nA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5e76a3d870ae62c644c838b254857c02 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - LONNIE HAMILTON Interviewee: LONNIE HAMILTON Interviewer: KIERAN TAYLOR Interview Date: February 16, 2017 Location: Charleston Length: 70 min. KIERAN TAYLOR: Mr. Hamilton, just for the sake of the recording, would you tell us your name and when and where you were born? LONNIE HAMILTON: My name is Lonnie Hamilton, III. I was born right here in Charleston and went to school at Burke High School and graduated from Burke High School in 1947. After that I went to South Carolina State. You do the numbers for me. I went to South Carolina State College, I graduated from there in 1951. Went into the Army for two years and after I came out of the Army I wanted to be a professional musician, but the registrar at the school said to me what you should do is teach for a couple of years and then if you decide that you wanted to go on the road then you can go on the road. So, I taught for two years at Sims High School in Union, South Carolina. Fell in love with teaching and I was encouraged to come back home. I taught at Bonds-Wilson High School which is no longer in existence for twenty years. While I was in the classroom I taught 3,600 students. I sent 131 of those students to college. I taught music. Recently, one of those students died by the name of Alphonse Mouzon. He was one of the top drummers in the country. He was internationally known. He had cancer and he died about a month ago. That student came out of that group of people that I �Lonnie Hamilton III 2 taught. During the time, most of those kids were matriculated at South Carolina State College. At one time, the majority of the people out there almost had at the band of South Carolina State College came from Bonds-Wilson High School. Our school was a very well-known school. We put out quality students and most colleges would take them without even having an audition. Just send them to me and we’ll take them and give them a scholarship. Most of them went on to do real well. A lot of them came out of college and went into the service. Some of them were in the Navy, some of them in the Army, some of them in the Air force. We’ve had generals out of that same group; we’ve had colonel’s (00:03:01) and then we’ve had lieutenant colonels out of that same group of students. But, they weren’t expected to do well. They were motivated to do things and they went out and did a lot of wonderful things. KT: You had mentioned graduating from Burke, but you spent a lot of your childhood in North Charleston? LH: Yeah, I lived in North Charleston. Let me explain this to you. When I came up, this was before integration, came out of elementary school there was not a high school in the North area. The only school that you had was Burke High School for Blacks. One school. Then if you did not live in the city proper you did not qualify to go to that school. You are not eligible to go there. So, I lied about my address in order to go to high school because other than that I would not have been able to go to high school. My address, if you go to Burke school today, you’ll see that my address is 128 Congress Street. I never spent one night in that �Lonnie Hamilton III 3 place. But, when they asked me what’s your address and I knew I had to have an address I said Congress Street and I met a girl who lived at that address. After that I went back to the lady and told her what I did and asked her would she give me permission to do it. They lied and said yep, you can stay here and this is your address. Never spent one night. So, that’s what happened and that’s how the system worked during those days. KT: How did you get from North Charleston then down to Burke every day? LH: I walked. I lived at Silver Hill, that’s just north of Mount Pleasant Street and I would walk there every day, walk to school, and I would walk back. If it rained during those days, you walked in the rain if you wanted to go to school. During that time, they had school on busses, county and city on busses for white students only. So, since I was not white I could not ride the bus, so I had to walk back and forth to get to school. KT: Your earliest memories then would have been during the Great Depression. Can you say a little bit about that, the Depression Era experience in Charleston? LH: Charleston, at that time, you must understand that back during the days of slavery nine of the richest individuals in the United States lived in Charleston. Charleston had its own society and because these people had all that money and the money came from cotton and rice that’s where they made the money. I hope some of you younger guys must understand that sometimes I talk about these kinds of things and it upsets people for the simple reason that they feel that you are blaming them for what happened. That’s a period that occurred, you had nothing to do with it. So, please don’t take it personal when we talk about these kinds of things because if it did not happen to me I don’t know what would have happened. If I had taken it personally, I don’t know what would have happened to me. I �Lonnie Hamilton III 4 never took any of this personally because the two people that encouraged me most was my grandfather and a white guy that I worked for by the name of Carter. He lived on Rutledge Avenue and he would observe me and he would say you’ve got natural talent. He says you should go to college. I knew nothing about no college. I’m just trying to make it. I never thought beyond high school because I had so much trouble getting to high school and getting out of high school. So, during those days most of the work was done. I had three opportunities I could be an undertaker, I could be a preacher, I could be a teacher. That’s it. Or I could go into the labor force and I was not structurally built to carry those four hundred pound bags of whatever you are producing in the fertilizer mills north of me. So, those are the three opportunities I had. I decided then that I wanted to go to college, encouraged by this guy. My teacher took me in the car and took me to the school. That’s how I got a chance to go to college. I loved music. I would go to concerts and stuff like that. You sneak in. You’re small you can get under the fence and stuff like that, you sneak in and you will go to a concert and watch the people play and you’ll say to yourself I like this. I like that. The instruments, I like this and I like that. My grandfather started taking care of me and he said to me for Christmas, what do you want for Christmas? I said I wanted a saxophone. I didn’t even think about it, I just thought that that was the name and I was going to say a saxophone. So, he bought me a saxophone for Christmas. I was in Burke school and I started taking private lessons in the afternoon. I started right after Christmas so I had until the summer in order to do what I was going to do. I was serious about my music until after that first maybe four months, they put me in �Lonnie Hamilton III 5 the band and I concentrated only on music. All of my friends were musicians. I had nothing to do with other people that much. If you didn’t play I didn’t want nothing to do with you. So, that helped me until when I got in the band then started being around people and during those days they had Jenkins Orphanage Band. Jenkins Orphanage Band was the top band that they had in the South East at producing students. So, I would hang out with the band. The band would go up and down King Street on Saturdays to raise money. I would go and the guys would ask me would you hold my music? It was the greatest thrill I had in the world that I got a chance to hold the music for these guys. During those days, most of the people in the orphanage came from away; Chicago, Philadelphia. Places like that because the parents would send them south to get their check from the government. The government paid the orphanage to keep orphans. So, the people would send their children south so that they can get that check and they had nothing to worry about because the orphanage and all the rest of it took care of all the kids. Then the government then decided that what they were going to do the kids would have to return back home. They could not stay in the orphanage any more so they had to return back to their place of residence. That’s how I got a chance to get in the band. They needed a saxophone player and I had gotten to the place that I could play pretty well. The guy said come on Lonnie, join us. So, I went and joined the band. Well, I didn’t want people to know that I was not an orphan because I thought that if they thought that I was not an orphan I would not be thought well of in the area, so I played the game of being in the orphanage just to be with them. In that two years, I travelled two times with the band all the way from Charleston to New York and we would go stop in a �Lonnie Hamilton III 6 place called Tasley, Virginia and we would play for the wealthy people in Virginia because they would have rickshaw races. They would go there for maybe two weeks and have a good time. They would take care of the band and give us money. We would go to New York and play on the street. We’d play on the street in New York and sometimes we could not get a permit to play in New York. When we did not, we’ll play and the cops will come and run us off the streets. So, we’d have to leave the street, but other places that we’d get a permit and they’d welcome us. People would gather around and people would give us enough money so that we could come back to Charleston and give that money to the orphanage. KT: Tell me, who were some of the players you were playing with in the orphanage band at that time? LH: The only famous one then was the drummer with Duke Ellington and the drummer with Rufus Jones. They call him speedy Jones. He was one of the top drummers in the entire world. He came right out of Charleston right out of Jenkins Orphanage. He was one of our friends, so when he got to be famous we would go to see him. In 1946 Lionel Hampton [Big] Band came to Charleston. I had gotten to the place then that I had made a name for myself and he had heard about me and he sent for me. I went to see him, I went to a place called the St. James Hotel on Spring Street. He sent for me and he sent for a guy named Leon Jones. I went and he said bring your horn. So, I played for him and he said I want you to meet me Monday morning in Charlottesville, Virginia; you got a job. I was happy. I ran home to momma and I said momma I’m going to be famous. I’m going on �Lonnie Hamilton III 7 the road; Lionel Hampton has offered me a job. She said you are going to college. My mom was law and order. You are going to college. I knew that was the end for me. She said I don’t want you out there on the road because guys on the road will have a tendency to start with drugs and I don’t want to out there with that kind of stuff. So, I said okay momma. Then Leon Jones took the job. Leon Jones met Lionel in Charlottesville, Virginia at the University of Virginia, that’s where he was playing. After that I was watching television one morning and here’s Leon with Lionel Hampton on the Today Show. I’m saying look at Leon. Two weeks later, Leon who came from Charleston was found in New York nude in the snow where he had OD’d. He went and got with Lionel band and started hanging out with the guys on drugs and he died. My momma said you see what I told you? So, I went to college and that helped me. I had no desire then of going back on the road. KT: Heroin was a problem in the jazz community even then? LH: Heroin killed him. See, how they started off they want to give you free drugs and I wouldn’t take it. I said no. I would take a drink. I would drink beer and I started later with taking a shot, but never cared that much for it because I started off with a Tampa Nugget cigar. They wanted me to try drugs and I said no I’m not going to do that. So, they said well take this cigar and I took the cigar and I smoked the cigar not knowing it I swallowed all this juice with the cigar and it made me so sick. I was so sick I didn’t know where I was. I said if it’s that bad I don’t want to mess with this stuff no more. So, I kept away from most of it. KT: Did you come from a musical family? �Lonnie Hamilton III 8 LH: No. No one played music in my family. My brother started. When my grandfather bought the saxophone for me my brother said I want a trumpet. He bought the trumpet. My brother kept it two weeks and he sold it because he had no interest in it at all. No one in my family played music. KT: As you are developing not only as a saxophonist, but also clarinet, right? LH: No, I never developed that well on the clarinet. You must understand that when I came up things were really bad. My mother had a third-grade education and my father I don’t know how high he went in school, but they did labor work. So, you didn’t have that much wealth that you can get the things. Most of it would be out there working and hustling and trying to get it. That’s what kept me from doing a lot of things, even my teacher. My teacher was a trumpet teacher, he didn’t know anything about saxophones. You took a book and he knew how to read music, but he did not know anything about the saxophone. I took a course at Indiana University on Henry Gulick, was one of the top clarinet players in the world. Everything I did and everything I was doing according to Henry Gulick was wrong. I’m saying oh my God, but he was right. The trumpet player never knew anything about saxophones and about techniques and stuff like that and he did the best he could. KT: This is Mr. Daniels? LH: Yeah, Mr. Daniels. Mr. Daniels did it. He did the best he could at the time because he knew I wanted to play so bad. But, after that I got to the place that had a desire to learn and after Gulick criticized everything I did and he was right. He was right, everything I did was wrong, but after you’ve done it that long it’s hell to change. So, many of the things that he told me to do it was very difficult for me to do. �Lonnie Hamilton III 9 But, I went on and I played for the Today Show when it would come to Charleston. They would call me and say I want your band. After I started playing I got to know other musicians then people would start calling me and ask me about doing jobs for them. I did the Today Show. I did a movie called Rich in Love, I guess in the 1990s I did this movie. And how I did that, I was at a place called Henry’s on Market Street. Let me tell you this, before Henry’s I met some white boys who thought my name had gotten big enough that we should take that name and go into business. So, what we did then we did Lonnie’s in 1982 I think it was. We opened Lonnie’s. I wanted to really get my own band and own my own club. I got with these guys right in Charleston, got with these guys and we organized Henry’s. The bad thing about Henry’s was that we had too many cooks. So, it did not really work out well for the simple reason that with so many people being in the kitchen my wife and I would go and we would do the book keeping. We would take care of paying the payrolls. The club was in my name. The lease was in my name. Everything was my name. The reason why I did it, I thought that white people would not accept me beyond Calhoun Street. Didn’t know it until I opened the club. When I opened the club one night the nine of us who owned it. They had nine of us and we would have people line up to get into that club. Governors would come, everybody would come to the club. I found out later because of a confrontation that the chief guy, he was a lawyer, had with some of my patrons and they told him. It’s white people saying this now, we don’t like your partners. We come here because of you Lonnie. I said I’ll be damned. I �Lonnie Hamilton III 10 spent all my time thinking that I would not be accepted. I was at 110 North Market Street. Now that’s the very famous restaurant. KT: Peninsula? LH: Peninsula. Next door to Peninsula. That’s where this club was. I’m thinking that these people are not going to let me come down here. Not knowing that it was alright. So, I’d waste my time doing that and then we decided later to go to Henry’s and Henry’s was down the street at 40-something and I stayed at Henry’s nine consecutive years playing at Henry’s. Everybody who was somebody came to Henry’s. So, you learn these things the hard way. What encouraged me during those days was there was a man than owned channel two, his name was Drayton Hastie on the station and he heard me saying that I wanted to leave Charleston because I would never be famous in Charleston. He called me and he said I don’t like what you said. You said you’ll never famous in Charleston. He said you can be famous in Charleston. I said how am I going to be famous in Charleston? He told me I’m going to have you to sign a contract with my station and I’m going to have you on television two times a day. You will come on at 7:00 o’clock in the morning and you will come back on 11:30 at night. Sure enough I signed a contract and I stayed on television until I wanted to go back to school to get my Master’s degree in music. Then I tried to enroll at the University of South Carolina and they told me we are not accepting black people. So, I said alright. I said I’ve got a G.I. bill. I’m going to exercise my right to go to school. You turn me down and then I’ll sue you and then I’ll get a chance then to go and get the Master’s degree. Well, they didn’t want to be sued, so they agreed that they would �Lonnie Hamilton III 11 help me to get the aid to go to any school in America that I wanted to go to and they will pay the difference from the University of South Carolina to that school. So, I went to Indiana University. Indiana University is a very classic school and they dealt mostly with classical music. I wanted to teach kids how to play music. The best school that they had then that had been recommended to me was one called VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. It’s a small school, but it dealt only with training teachers. I went there and the last year when I am about ready to graduate with my Master’s degree the University of South Carolina wrote me a letter and said that we are now accepting black people and we are demanding that you come back home. I’m getting ready to graduate. I said what. So, I told them no, I was not coming back to South Carolina and if they tried to prohibit me from getting my degree at VanderCook I would sue them. Well, they didn’t want no suit, so they then allowed me to finish school and that’s how I got my Master’s from VanderCook. KT: The state of South Carolina over the years paid probably in the millions of dollars to protect segregation, sending African American students, paying for their tuition to go out of state. LH: Dr. Taylor, with that bill I went to six different colleges. I had a good time. Places that would have never accepted me. My daughter went to Duke. I looked at Duke and I said God this is a beautiful place, but I knew that they wouldn’t take me. But, they spent billions just to keep me from going. Listen at this, and then after I came back and I was doing so well the Chamber of Commerce gave me the star teachers award because my students have been so successful. Gave me that star teacher award and all this. The University of South Carolina sent me a letter and asked me to please allow �Lonnie Hamilton III 12 them to have all of my papers. My wife — the ceiling almost came off that house. She said you are not going to send your papers to the University of South Carolina when they would not accept you. You are not going to do it. So, I had to refuse to send it there and now my papers are down at Avery. KT: Can you give us a sense because you are playing in the marching bands, you’re playing on the street with Jenkins, but then also doing a lot of club music in the 40s and 50s; I don’t know whether you’d call it early rock and roll. LH: The early music that you had here in Charleston, we had been different places and we took and brought different ideas back and then you had this Charleston flavor of things that we brought from other places and put together the things that we were doing here. I heard somebody say the other day about George Gershwin. George Gershwin came to Charleston and he hung out in the black community and he hung out with all these guys. The guy who came out of the orphanage’s son, he wrote some music that sounds exactly, in fact, I’ve got plenty of nothing George Gershwin stole that idea from that guy. That guy came out before Gershwin and Gershwin had put I’ve got plenty of nothing in there. If you listen to his music than ten years before Gershwin I said Lord, and that’s what happened. But, George Gershwin had a name, this guy didn’t. So, we then had a chance then to blend things among ourselves. Now, because of segregation the white people could not play with the blacks. That was a thing that was taboo. You didn’t do that. Then later when we got to the place that the union came in. The union tried to keep all of the black musicians from being able to play by saying that they wanted to unionize the clubs. If you unionize the clubs, the clubs can only hire white �Lonnie Hamilton III 13 musicians. Well, the white guys didn’t play jazz like we did at that time because we were not allowed to associate with each other to have any connection with each other, so we were not getting ideas from each other. They were doing their things and we were doing our things. And then later they started to have afternoon jazz sessions at some of the restaurants on Sunday afternoon when they are closed so that they would not have the people to be known that white and black people are having that kind of — KT: Here in Charleston? LH: Here in Charleston. KT: Do you remember the first time you played with white musicians? LH: The first time I played with white musicians, I don’t remember the year, but I hired the first white musician to play with me. There was a guy that came in town and you might have heard of him, Joe Wilson came to town out of the Navy. Joe Wilson didn’t have any friends here, didn’t know anybody so we helped to find him a place for his family. He was a good guitarist. Helped him find a place for his family and in order for him to have money since he didn’t have any money. In order for him to have money I hired him. I let him work with me. It’s a funny thing, I got away with murder, what I mean by racially murder for the simple reason that a lot of people would not challenge anything that I would do. I’ll give you an example, down on East Bay Street you had the yacht club. The yacht club would hire musicians, all black, then the yacht club would not allow them to come through the front door. They had to go through the back door to get in. I had gotten to the place that my band had gotten to be known and well respected and I demanded that my guys dress well �Lonnie Hamilton III 14 because I found out that that’s the way that you could get extra money. The way you looked, the way they paid you. So, they said to me that they didn’t want the guys to eat and even when I integrated the band they didn’t want them to eat in the yacht club and they couldn’t come through the front door. I rebelled against that. My guys came through the front door and my guys ate and I got away with it because I said to them if you don’t let my guys do this then I don’t want to play. KT: About what year do you think that was? LH: That’s in the 60s. KT: Was that before the Diplomats? LH: That’s before the Diplomats. The Diplomats came up at Henry’s time. KT: Do you remember your first-time hearing jazz in a club? LH: Oh yeah. The first-time hearing jazz was not in the club. The first was a group called Silas Green Minstrel. The Minstrel would come to Charleston and they had some of the swingiest musicians you ever want to hear. I would go there and I would die. Those guys could play. They could really play and that’s when it first started. KT: Where would that have been? LH: That was an open field down near Burke school and they would set up the circus out there and have the animals out there. The show would be Silas Green Minstrel. You hear some good music and that’s the thing that encouraged us. Musicians during those days would hang around with each other. They would pal around, have a good time with each other and it was not this competition thing. I want to be better than you. I’m 89 years-old now and he said to me the other day he heard me play. He said you can’t play as fast as I play. I said yeah, I’ve got arthritis and all these (00:34:22) you �Lonnie Hamilton III 15 know, but if you had met me when I was 30 I’d got you behind. That’s the difference now. We honored all of the older musicians. We hung out and for them to come, you know what they would do, they would give us reeds and mouthpieces and stuff like that. We thought that was the greatest thing in the world to be in their midst. We were honored to be among them. Today it’s different. Younger guys don’t want to have that much to do with older people and as a result of that they miss so much. I was playing with a group and they asked me to play songs. I met Louis Armstrong and Louis Armstrong said learn the melody. Most of the young people who are playing today a single melody line they don’t want to do it. They get beyond their audience. My audience made me. They came to see me. In that nine years at Henry’s I made $390,000. Do you realize that I’ve got a good friend in Orangeburg right now that played with Count Basie band for forty years and the largest amount of money that he made in salary was $27,000 and he’d been all over the world. I made better than that right here in Charleston. But, I made mine by understanding that the people made me. I was never above the people. I was there to serve and to have them to be happy about what I was doing because without them I would have not been there. As a result, with that attitude things went well. KT: In terms of composing, I’m wondering how important was it to you to compose your own music? LH: It was very important. This, back in 1990-something MGM came to Charleston. There is a woman on Isle of Palm by the name of Josephine Humphrey. She wrote a book about the Citadel Cadets. Back in the 60s and I was at Henry’s. MGM came �Lonnie Hamilton III 16 to town because they liked the book. They wanted to do a movie on the book. They wanted to send back to Los Angeles to get a band to do the music for it. The group came one night to Henry’s and heard me play. They went back and told the director. Have you all ever heard or seen the movie Driving Miss Daisy? Anybody? Well, Driving Miss Daisy was a movie that was directed by a guy named Bruce Beresford. They came to Henry’s and heard the band. Some of the staff went back and told Bruce the director about the band. The next night they came again. Then I got a call from Bruce saying that he wanted me to do a movie. I said to him what you want me to do a movie? He said yeah, I want you to do a movie. So, I thought he was pulling my leg. I said yeah and I want to go to the movie. He laughed and he said no, I’m serious. I want you to do a movie. He said the group is coming back to the club Saturday night and if you can get together we want you to do the movie. So, they came, liked the band and then said to me Bruce will call you tomorrow. Bruce called me and Bruce said do you have anything original that I can put in that movie? I got a spot and I’ve got to have some music. So, I said no I don’t have anything that I think would be used for the movie, but I said I’ll tell you this. I can write something. So, I wrote a blues thing — what does it say there? KT: “Ugly Ways Blues” by Lonnie Hamilton. Performed by Lonnie Hamilton and the Diplomats. LH: What I did, I wrote that in an hour. I wrote it in an hour and he said he liked it. He said put it together for the band and play it. So, I played it. Then he said I want it. �Lonnie Hamilton III 17 Send me the music. I had the band play it and sent it Los Angeles. First Bruce said to me you get yourself an entertainment lawyer because you are going to make some money out of this thing. Well, I am thinking the man is crazy, I never had a lawyer before to do anything, but I called around and they told me that there was a lawyer in Greenville, South Carolina. I want you to know I got credit in the movie. After I got the lawyer named Bailey out of Greenville, he sent it to the Smithsonian, had it recorded and all that stuff and I got royalties off that song for ten years. I get money from Malaysia, from Hong Kong, from every place that they showed the movie I would get money from. For ten years, I got that money. For one song. The lawyer he set that whole thing up for me. My momma saw it, you get the credits you know how they roll up and give the credits. In the movie, and I’ve got a copy of the movie, in the movie it shows my name Lonnie Hamilton, III “Ugly Ways Blues” as it’s rolling. She says son look at that, look at you. So, I did get a chance to be famous in her sights. But, it was very good because I got paid for the movie and plus I got my royalties. Now, here’s the difference. During the period that the book was written The Citadel guys used to hang out in the black community over in Mount Pleasant and it was a speak easy place. They’d go over there and drink that stuff and get drunk and raise Cain and all that stuff. All that is in the book. The band that I had is an integrated band at that period. So, I took the band and I recorded the music with the integrated band, but when I showed the face on the movie I had to bring in fillers. So, you saw people in the movie acting like they are playing music. Acting like �Lonnie Hamilton III 18 they are playing the instrument, but they weren’t playing there were fillers. My actual band which was an integrated band they did the recording. Because you could not show the face of a mixed group during those days the guys got paid. My white boys got paid, but they couldn’t show their face. But it was a lot of fun. KT: I’m going to open it up, what questions from the floor are there? Male Voice: I think a lot of movies and books depict that The Temptations were the first group to break the color barrier to play music for an audience that didn’t look like them. Would you say that is true or? LH: A lot of The Temptation music appeared in these movies, but like you are saying they didn’t get a lot of credit for. Like right now, you remember Motown? Motown was very known and famous. The bass player for Motown came off the island, right here. Never got no credit. Everybody is going out there doing his thing, playing his music and because he did not have an entertainment lawyer like I had he got nothing. Yeah, a lot of stuff was stolen during those days like that. KT: Other questions? Shout it out. Female Voice: So, you said that Drayton Hastie was the one who helped you, is that the Drayton Hastie of Magnolia Plantations? LH: Yes ma’am, that’s him. Female Voice: So, after that and helping you move forward, did you remain in contact with him? LH: Yes, I did. Remember now, I had a contract with the station. He did it right. He had me to sign a contract. I was a contract musician with the station. I got all the credits and stuff like that, but you must understand this, in America �Lonnie Hamilton III 19 and in Charleston in the society you know your place. Drayton Hastie is a multimillionaire, what is he going to do with Lonnie Hamilton? You understand? He encouraged me and he sent me on my way. You still have that today right here. That type relationship. He saw the opportunity to help and he helped. KT: Is there a unique — Charleston sound within the jazz community? LH: It used to be, but you’ve had some much interrelationship with a musician coming from different places now. I like something that you did. I watched the guys right now. In my days, I could come into the hall and I could hear a musician playing. I didn’t have to see their face, I knew who they were. Today it’s altogether different. Why? Because everybody wants to play like one person. I wanted to be different. They will tell you right now, I play a Mark VI Selmer saxophone. The day before yesterday we went up to a nursing home to play for some people because there were some people up there who hadn’t had anybody to come to visit them in two years, not one person. So, we went up there just to play some music for Valentine’s day. Three people were crying in there because they had nobody that had been to them in three years. You go around and you see these things and everything starts, you like some of this and you like some of that, but our thing was to be unique. To be our own. Today it’s altogether different. KT: How would you have described that Charleston sound? LH: The Charleston sound, to me, there is a dispute between what happened in New Orleans and what happened in Charleston. If you go, there you will see similarities. Ours are much more the true jazz that I think in terms of. Because they start mixing the �Lonnie Hamilton III 20 music there with the creoles and all that stuff coming in. But, I would say that ours was the first to — we had all the money. We can buy everything, so we had a better opportunity than they had down there. KT: You feel like in the 30s, the 40s what you were hearing here was pure jazz? LH: Yeah, pure. Why? Because the older guys would say to you “jazz is like a conversation”. You are going to say what you think in the conversation, you’ve got an opinion. The other person has an opinion and when you do your solo you are speaking your opinion. So, that’s the way it went. With a person coming up and saying this is the way I would approach it, the other person saying I would approach it and my way is the best way. KT: Questions? I have loads if you don’t. Male Voice 1: Do you ever remember when Elvis Presley came to Charleston? LH: I remember Elvis, yeah. But, you must understand that I liked some of the songs and stuff that Elvis did because I go back now and I’ll take one of my good singers, Dion from Canada. KT: Celine. LH: Celine Dion. She did an Elvis thing the other day, it was incredible. So, that’s the way it was. I was not actually into the Elvis thing. I think for the simplicity of it. My mind was more complex musically than what Elvis was doing. But, Elvis had us slinging it and it went well for him. KT: Would you have played Mosquito Beach and Riverview? LH: I did Mosquito Beach. KT: For those of us who were never there, what did that look like? What was it �Lonnie Hamilton III 21 and what did it look like? LH: (laughing) The scene was an open top screen wire around. It’s nothing but sticks up with something shelter over the top. Nothing attractive. It’s just nothing. But, the people would go there and have a good time. They’ll go there and get that scrap iron and they’ll have a good time. Now, because the best liquor was made in that Moncks Corner area up there and they’ll bring it by the jug. The homemade liquor they put it in jugs. They’ll bring the jug down and man they’ll have a time. KT: Those are good audiences to play for? LH: Listen, those were the greatest audience in the world. You never had people to go and want to do anything harmful. The musicians were treated like Gods. Jesus, man, I’ve had the best treatment that you’d ever want to have, all because I could play the horn. Now, if I couldn’t play that horn I was in trouble, but if I had that horn oh I was in good shape. I could go anyplace. I could take that horn and go. How do you think you got a lot of integration? That horn integrated a lot. They’ll say we don’t want black people in here. Oh, Lonnie, let him come. I wasn’t black because I had the horn, but if I didn’t have that horn I couldn’t even get in there. Today it’s still the same. That horn will take you into any place. Male Voice 3: Yeah, you said you served in the Army? LH: Yeah. Male Voice 3: Sometime in the 50s? LH: I was in Korea for a year-and-a-half. Male Voice 3: What was that like? LH: Well, the war was over when I got there. The war was just over, but all the �Lonnie Hamilton III 22 remnants of war and Seoul was a dump. I went back to Seoul ten years ago, and the Americans have built a beautiful city there, I mean gorgeous. But, when I was there it was a dump because they bombed it to the ground. That was the difference there. That’s why I was glad that when I got there it was not during the time of confrontation where they were fighting. I stayed in Korea a year. KT: What took you to Union County? Were you in Monroe, or were you teaching out in the county? LH: No. How I got to Union County was that the registrar. You see, the registrar was a jazz lover. She loved to hear me play. She wanted to get me a job where I could be some place in South Carolina. So, she found a job in Union for me. I had never been to Union, never heard of it. She said I’ve got this job for you, go and take this job. If you don’t like it, try it two years, and if you still got that thing about wanting to go on the road you do it. I was glad. That was the best advice that anyone could have given me at that time. I thought the road was heaven and it wasn’t because I’ve had a good life. Going on that road I’d have been in trouble, but I got here and I started teaching. I got to have a family because all the kids that I taught they would come back and we would have reunions and stuff like that. I was so happy with the family that I built with the kids that I taught. In 1970 they integrated the schools. I am a very well-known teacher with a lot of success and when they integrated the schools they decided it would be best not to have me to teach white kids. It would be best to have me to be a vice principal. So, they offered me vice principal at five different schools. I had already selected the school that I wanted and then �Lonnie Hamilton III 23 the superintendent came back and said Mr. Hamilton funny things happen. They want you to stay as a teacher. I said who do you mean when you say they; you mean the white people? He said yes. I said well have you explained to them my feeling on discipline? He said no. I said well you better talk to them about that first before we talk about putting me back in the classroom. So, they had this big meeting. Not one black person in the meeting; all white people. We had a good meeting. At the end a white woman held up her hand and said Mr. Hamilton. I said yes? She said I heard that you’ve got a paddle. I did, I would paddle my students and said yes ma’am I do have a paddle. She said well, the paddles got to go. I said, okay, we’ll find a way to handle that. They integrated the school, they brought in 70% white kids, 30% black kids and that’s how they integrated the schools. Nothing changed for me. My relationship was the same with my students to the extent that one of my white students and her boyfriend wanted to get married. They were at the University of South Carolina. Susan who was the white girl’s father had separated from her mother. They only father she knew was me. So, she said I want you to give me away. I said Lord have mercy. I went over and I told my wife. I said Susan wants me to give her away. She said can you talk her out of that? I said, no, you know Susan. Susan is strong headed and what she wants Susan will do that. So, I agreed to give Susan away and they had the wedding at the University of South Carolina where they were in school. They had it at the chapel. They didn’t have anything in there black, none of the machines were black. I am in there sitting down, I’m going through the ceremony and �Lonnie Hamilton III 24 when they got to that part because she wanted that part who gives this woman away and I said I do. When I said that you could hear a rat eat (00:58:07) on a piece of cotton. Everything got quiet. People are saying you? But that’s what Susan wanted. Susan and Ron are still together. They are still married to each other. Ron is the superintendent of a school and Susan is the head English teacher at the school. That was a time in my life that it was really serious stuff. They didn’t care, I was still their daddy. Today, I got white kids that I taught, I’m daddy. But, other older people didn’t understand that relationship. So, that’s the kind of stuff that we had during the day of integration. KT: Because he just passed away, tell me about Alphonse Mouzon and what kind of a student do you remember him as? LH: Alphonse Mouzon came to me from Union Heights. We were at BondsWilson which was up on Liberty Hill. When I met him first he had two sticks beating on a tin can. He wanted to be in the band. So, I took him in the band and I had just taken a lesson from a guy named Haskell Hall, one of the top percussionist teachers in America. So, that’s why I went to that school to get my Master’s degree. I took him, I gave him a real drum, I taught him how to hold the drumsticks and took him through the rudiments of playing. He won for three consecutive years he won the all-state band. What I mean by that, all of the high schools would participate in what they called the all-state band. They would take the top musician from the band to make up the all-stand band. For three consecutive years, he made the all-state band. Not only that, I had one sousaphone player that made Macy’s All American Band. That was unheard of. That was a good experience for the simple reason that when George Brown made the all-American �Lonnie Hamilton III 25 band they only select two students from each state. For that black boy, back in the 60s to make that all-American band, he was good. So, Revelli who was the conductor of the band sent me a letter saying that he has been selected for the band and told me that I should get in touch with the Post & Courier to let them know that the boy had made the band. So, I ran down to the Post & Courier to publicize this. They said that it didn’t merit being published. I sent back to Revelli to let him know that they wouldn’t publish it because he came from a black school and was a black boy. So, Revelli took a picture with him. Revelli sent the picture to the Post & Courier and they published it. Well, the intent was to not connect the picture with Charleston and the black school, but to connect the picture with Revelli and the United States. But, he got his picture in there and he played in the Macy’s Parade and to Tournament of Roses in California. After that, after they wouldn’t publicize anything, they didn’t want to show anything about it he gave up and stopped playing. They broke his heart. But, he was something. He was a giant and he was a giant in the twelfth grade. Those are the kinds of things that really hurt. That paper did some heck of things. I was surprised when they published the fact that I was selected as a teacher of the year. But, hell, I had done everything. My name was known up and down the east coast for putting out good students. What could they do? But, it was difficult for them to do it. That hurt a lot of people. It broke the spirit of people. A lot of people who would have been successful because everybody wants a pat on the back sometimes and to say you did well. That’s why I admire what you are doing here as a teacher. These kids wouldn’t �Lonnie Hamilton III 26 understand this until they get off, ten years from today they look back and say damn. Dr. Taylor did a good job with us. He helped us, he opened us up to a lot of things that happened. It doesn’t come instantly. KT: Other questions? Who was your favorite person to play with? To share a stage with? LH: You mean locally? KT: A local person, a national person. LH: National people, what we were doing during the time that we were playing, we didn’t get a chance to go on the stage many times a play with. The best time that I had was the ones that I opened for. When my band was really well known in Charleston in doing well and in demand. I opened for Dizzy. Dizzy was from Charleston and for Dizzy to sit down and listen to my band and want to eat fried chicken with me, it said a lot to me that Dizzy approved that band and that band opened. For those who don’t understand opening, what a band does is normally when a big name comes to town you’ll get somebody to warm up the crowd for that person and that’s what you call an opener. I would open when Take 6 came. I notice Take 6 had been here the other day. I opened for them. Nancy Wilson came. We would play to get the crowd warmed up for them. That’s the way we got our chance to be among the big names. We didn’t play that much with them. The other day I did a recording for the College of Charleston with Houston Person, he is a tenor saxophone player who comes from Florence, South Carolina that is well known internationally. Houston came and we did a recording together for the College of Charleston. I think we did six sides. �Lonnie Hamilton III 27 There was a recording studio in Mount Pleasant that we did it in with the Charlton Singleton group. We made a recording. In Charleston one day I made the highest amount of money that I made as a side man was $1,200 a day, right here in this town. KT: Any concluding thoughts or maybe something that I didn’t ask that you wanted to talk about? LH: No. KT: Any final reflections? LH: I’m just thrilled at the idea that I got a chance. I like young people. I feed off young people. I like to be around them because I learn so much from them and at my age you still learn. When you get my age, younger people don’t want to hang around too much. It was good this morning to have me to get up at 5:30 and say I’m going down to The Citadel to be with the guys because I remember when I did the movie and they had fillers to come in from the college. Then I remember that I was allowed to come here to do graduate studies. They didn’t tell me they were not accepting blacks. But, prior to that I had good relationships with the school, General [James A. ] Grimsley has asked me when I was chairman of County Council. See, I was in politics and that helped a lot too. I was the highest elected official in this county one time. That meant that I was the chief elected official for the entire Charleston County. The office building that you go to pay your tax now, if you live in Charleston is named the Lonnie Hamilton, III Public Service Building. That’s because my colleagues, and they were all white people, thought enough of me to want to name that building in my honor. Some time ago, they built the building and they named it for me. They tried to �28 Lonnie Hamilton III keep it secret because they didn’t want me to know that that’s what they wanted to do. They said they wanted the building to be named in my honor because I stayed in public office, I stayed in County Council for twenty-four years and never got a nickel. I did all public service and that’s what the building is named, public service. Now, all my colleagues are multimillionaires because they got the money. That’s what politics is all about, they get the money. KT: Well, we look forward to having you back. Thank you so much. LH: I enjoyed it. End of recording. Edited ML May 5 2017 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/d54b69e67c55f46462551add3b8295c7.mp3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=Xf7LFkW0kLkxahBcj6Z6zzmYJqmkGIoRspwxyQwet9nRgcsbaZPS6Dayy2KZ6qkh4NLjzbAxy19yhiNx7otPDFzjk4iplo7vnuTJdv2SXfyiQNlXdkdHShxQIjTogR8b3qg%7EkgVRV7ny1eaC3BmxJCAqpX5yFHdWqYu8ciT85ASzLxJR8O%7E%7E7Y7VLO5Kes3bhKZM2kNcHB4YGzpSLf%7E-QgIaCKHq8tfSBetJGlDE3XZTMn0nWpZnYrgWgu6Wpl7D1C2kQOGzYDCDIHO7eb0bEugZL3OMx8Ha7Q0ZR1-b22TjbKpCDWrgrY-bPdGb0wUhqiGgUsgTwCkr-6vEtbhC%7Ew__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7b15ccb64b0d3a122a668a32cf47f7d5 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/f65e268f7d0226b115ab13f933133a1b.jpg?Expires=1792627200&Signature=u8ZSSXYX0Zno6wHRLI7wnya75q2AUOF0p-vtAzSpncxqtcXeSVrBgYtHCTewufDbbxWCk4QyrvtSaHV9BFzGNO7hjLpkV5gAwLUV%7EP3YOxBfqQhpXqGgzgSzFmZREMAg1WmYG0whVw4w9rEmXetgzECA7t2GdFZr2xgKCGOsDXW5xMoKWmNjTxS3QUFQqK4PTiNVLrj5GyDqK8jXbc8BOYZpO8HY-ri12f-N63ECDISC50LR3vMhYhf-EQotp9v51iegolVztqyxJ8S2xvjpm5LGsddbdjzt9cAJ2u7pr46R8-DNKl6feUAgnpdB9EoRn%7EsfUc2WdV3bVJoPWakO9g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c1b113493959a4c2bc8301af991887f8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kieran Walsh Taylor Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lonnie Hamilton Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 10 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Lonnie Hamilton, interviewed by Kieran Walsh Taylor, 16 February, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource African American musicians African American band directors Music entrepreneurship Description An account of the resource Musician, educator, and community leader Lonnie Hamilton III was born in Charleston in 1927. He is a graduate of South Carolina State College and VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. In the interview, Hamilton reflects about growing up and developing his career in the segregated South since his beginnings at Burke High and the Jenkins Orphanage Band. He speaks about his long and gratifying career as an educator, teaching music at Sims High School in Union, South Carolina and at Bonds-Wilson High School in North Charleston, South Carolina, and the many relationships he forged with his students over the years. He talks about the highlights of his performing career: playing daily on Channel 2, attaining the dream to have his own club, Lonnie’s, his successful years playing at Henry’s on North Market Street, and having the opportunity to compose an original song, “Ugly Way Blues” that he performed for the movie Rich in Love. Hamilton recalls the excitement he felt when he listened to jazz music for the first time in a show called Silas Green Minstrel in downtown Charleston and describes playing at Mosquito Beach as a unique and wonderful experience. Hamilton takes pride in his accomplishments, as an educator, as a musician, as a businessperson, and as a City Council member. He affirms he was able to break Charleston’s racial and economic barriers thanks to his saxophone. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-02-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/613 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/cf815ac4d144b241c24c8e0b488ccfde.pdf?Expires=1792627200&Signature=CE6edplQme3OqZeAw%7EgDLpNJ5I3sE8WP9pM4ZKtNiIn-VQXfp7sW7Gj6NrIUzEugkrYVSnwfBD8p1q5ofLIPyfJrBSk3l4wE-V%7EHl6p76PQpiOGJrdgSiiQ7m3HMAmQ2OYHjzbhcCZrGBY-jmbz7EuTQPn%7Ekm3B4qml5n3sLbpqkY7LxEPcic6q9ygSXRLP5LW8ovzwQ5uGjHw0pmmXJvX09knuUYDi9mkDJwXIHYSS6LIeL4p6pDKE-aUDv48VskkzbrBkQ0aMab9MfXqjAh44lGXNs-rzcYi8nTZuw7s4fhgxq-TyDKjo1pfdKEXFA1eKVYc5-GCL46ll--rG5xA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2a68e73585c817e2b9e7bdb90c6e2f31 PDF Text Text TRANSCRIPT - ANN CALDWELL Interviewee: ANN CALDWELL Interviewer: KIERAN TAYLOR Interview Date: JANUARY 27, 2017 Location: CHARLESTON, SC Length: 72 min. KIERAN TAYLOR: Make sure we’re—you know all about this, but it’s got to be up pretty close. It’s a good mic, but not a great mic. Just to get us started and maybe for the sake the recording? ANN CALDWELL: Can I hold it? KT: Yeah, would you prefer to hold it? The only thing—and I might turn this around and just see if there’s any kind of scuffle noise. But, I think that should be good. This is a vocalist clearly who wants to hold her own mic. Ms. Caldwell, just for the sake of ID’ing the recording, can you say your full name and where and when you were born? AC: My real birthdate? My name is Ann Caldwell. I was born in Denmark, South Carolina, November, 15 in the 1900s. KT: That gives us a lot to work with, we’ll leave it at that. AC: 1952. KT: Tell me, what was your first musical memory? AC: My goodness. I wasn’t raised in Denmark, but we occasionally attended Springfield Church in Denmark, South Carolina. If you’re not sure about where Denmark is, it’s in Bamberg County. If you are looking at a map Orangeburg sits at the top of Bamberg County. So, if you are ever wanting to go there, God only knows what for, �Ann Caldwell 2 that’s where it is. But, in the church there was a capella singing. There was a piano, but nobody ever played that piano. It was still in a heap on the floor when we went back to tend to my mother’s gravesite. She is buried in the Springfield Cemetery near the church. So, I think that was kind of my first, if you want to go with a recollection of singing, that’s when I kind of started remembering it. KT: Are there specific memories of being in that church and hearing that music? AC: Not really, because my family moved away from Denmark and settled in Charleston about 1955. So, whenever we visited it was always in the summer time because I do not remember Springfield Church in the winter. There was no air conditioning and maybe there was heat, but we never had to be concerned about it because we never went back to Springfield in the wintertime. Picnics in the cemetery yard, stuff like that. It was always services at night. We never went in the daytime. It was always night services. So, again I had one memory of Springfield where everybody was singing. There was a lot of singing going on and all of a sudden, the lights went out. When the lights go out in a place way back in Denmark it gets pitch black dark. I actually thought I had suddenly gone blind. What was interesting was that the music never stopped. They never stopped singing. They kept right on singing in the dark until the lights finally came on again. So, I have that memory of it. KT: Your memories then of Denmark are not of living there necessarily, but of visiting and being with family. Do you consider yourself a Charleston native or? AC: I would say yeah, but if anybody asks I’ll always go back to well I was born in Denmark, South Carolina and I have to tell you all this because when I get to heaven �Ann Caldwell 3 momma’s going to ask me why didn’t you tell them where you were from? So, I have clearer memories of being in Charleston than I do of being in Denmark. KT: People who were born in Charleston might challenge you on it as well if you’re not born here. AC: They just might. KT: You were basically three years old or so when you moved to Charleston? AC: Yeah, my father got a job in Charleston. Denmark is basically a lumber town. At the time we left, it was dirt roads, lots of wooded areas. Nobody had indoor plumbing, everybody had the outhouse. I remember outhouses and chicken coops. KT: Where did you move in Charleston? AC: I remember 781A East Bay Street. The Sanders Clyde School was where it is now, but it was all just one story. One story, again dirt yards. There wasn’t a whole lot of pavement, but that’s where we lived for a while. KT: I’m thinking about two blocks north of the Cigar Factory? AC: Yes. In fact, we lived right next door to a lady whose name is Ms. Babe. I’m amazed at my memory because it’s really bad. But, I remember Ms. Babe. She worked at the Cigar Factory. I believe her daughter did as well. But, I remember the Cigar Factory as a cigar factory and not what it is now. KT: It’s a place to get a $4 cup of coffee today. But, that’s where many working class Charlestonians, black and white, made a living for the American Tobacco Company. Where there other musicians or musical people in the family? AC: Not really. The only person that came close to it was my father who whistled. I learned to whistle. My mother wasn’t pleased about that because young ladies don’t �Ann Caldwell 4 whistle. I’m sorry, I whistled. That’s what I learned from my father. He never sang, he never played an instrument. He just whistled. I’m the one that picked up the habit of whistling. My brother didn’t pick it up, my sister didn’t pick it up. I got it. Don’t ask me to whistle, I can't whistle on command. KT: I was about to. AC: I can't whistle on command, it hasn’t happened yet. KT: At some point, was there a popular music that you identified with and said yeah, that’s something that really speaks to my experience as a young person? Something that got you even more kind of involved or interested in music? AC: I really didn’t become interested in music until I was much older. At that time everybody knew gospel, and you knew R&B. They had two major radio stations. One of them was WPAL, that was a black radio station, any artist that was black was played on WPAL. Whether they were R&B or gospel. And there was TMA, before TMA became talk radio. TMA played everything else. So, I kind of bided my time between both of them. WPAL would play gospel in the morning. Before we would go to school my mother would put on the radio and we’d listen to gospel music. Of course, by a certain time of the day the gospel stopped and it went to the R&B, so we heard groups like the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Mahalia Jackson, Five Blind Boys, Dorothy Norwood. We heard all those. Even Sam Cooke, if anybody knows of Sam Cooke. When Sam Cooke was doing gospel. KT: With the Soul Stirrers? AC: With the Soul Stirrers. Then there was TMA that was playing everything �Ann Caldwell 5 else. Sarah Vaughn the one pop song she ever did was on TMA. George Maharis that did Route 66. The Drifters. They kind of bided their time between the two different groups, but basically more of the white artists were on PAL. KT: How about your church experience in Charleston? Was you family a church going family and was there music at the church that had any particular influence? AC: Yeah, there was music in the church. Everybody went to church except daddy. Daddy had no use for church at that time in life. He went later on, I’m talking years later. Momma would send us to Sunday school and then she’d come on later. Everybody would sit in the front row in church because you couldn’t misbehave with all the kids sitting in the front row because momma could see you acting up in the back and the preacher could see you acting up from the front. There was a lot of singing. In the city, they had organs and pianos. So, there was a lot of gospel music. A lot of gospel and there was probably some spirituals. I didn’t participate in any choirs at that time, like I said I was grown I guess when I finally got into a choir. But, for the most part we sat and listened to everybody else sing. KT: Even through high school, you had no sort of inkling that you might want to be a musician? AC: Nope. KT: Tell me about that then, what are the key sort of steps that made you to begin thinking about well this might be something that I have some talent for and it might offer some possibilities? AC: I was a closet singer. You all wouldn’t know it, but record players were almost as big as this thing. It was pieces of furniture. There were no headphones. I would �Ann Caldwell 6 literally lay down in front of the record player. At that time, you had records, you could stack them six to a stack and they’d fall down and play them. I was singing along. I do have that recollection it was, I think, my mother that kind of made me do something. Again, I was married, pregnant when I sang my first solo in church. I was singing with a group called the Power of Faith Gospel Singers. It was a quartet, three women, one guy. They more or less talked me into doing it. They said you’ve got to sing a solo. I don’t want to do that. Yes, you’re going to sing the solo. So, I went ahead and did it. I think two or three weeks later I had the baby, but I did my first solo before my daughter was born and she is now forty-one. So, that’s how far back that goes. KT: What church was that? AC: That was Mt. Zion AME Church. On Glebe Street, it’s still there. KT: Is that still your church? AC: No, it is not. KT: That was one of your churches was down at Mt. Zion. Approaching this first solo, did that make you anxious, or by that time did you have the confidence to share your gifts with the public? AC: I was nervous as all get out, but all the stuff that I had been listening to along and along kind of played into it because I had been listening to R&B. I had been listening to pop. I had been listening to the spirituals. I had been listening to Mahalia Jackson and then there was the Nancy Wilson’s and the Supremes and all of that kind of played into it, so I was kind of doing stuff in church that nobody else was doing. Do I remember the first song? Yes. �Ann Caldwell 7 I was one of the fewest singers who was ending songs a certain way. With my soul (sings) nobody was doing that. Where’d that come from? I’m not sure. I did kind of the ballads in church. I did all the slow stuff. I did not get into the hand clapping thing at that time. KT: So, that kind of unique dimension to your singing very early on, was that reflective of the pop influences or jazz influences? How would you describe that? AC: That was more of the pop, R&B stuff I was hearing in churches where improvisation was done. There was a lot of improvisation in the churches. So, I kind of picked that up and pretty much what I say made my own soup and that was my signature to always do those highs and lows and kind of mix it up a little bit. As far as jazz, I really didn’t get into jazz until maybe 1990s. I didn’t hear that much jazz. It was still around, it’s just that I didn’t travel in those circles. It was always the gospel, it was always the R&B, pop things. That’s where I was. Pop and R&B, in my mother’s house was something you didn’t do on Sunday’s. You are not going to sing that stuff on Sunday’s you have to sing gospel on Sunday’s. Don’t sing that secular stuff on Sunday’s. KT: How did that go over? Because I’m sure there’d be some expectation at Mt. Zion that the gospel music should sound a certain way, that the spirituals should be sung a certain way. Was there any resistance to your sort of R&B sensibilities? AC: At that time, there might have been. I was never conscious of it. It was just common knowledge, everybody listened to the stuff during the week, but then you listened to gospel in the churches. I think I have a recollection of Sam Cooke getting in trouble because at the time they called it cross over when he was doing gospel and then �Ann Caldwell 8 he was coming back with doing the R&B thing, but he was influenced by the pop. He brought that into his gospel singing which is kind of probably got him in trouble. But, the girls thought it was cool. At that time, it’s not that case anymore. KT: But, the lines were beginning to blur between sacred and secular music I guess. AC: The Winans, I would say erased that line with what they were doing with the contemporary thing. I think the line began to be about invisible about that time. KT: At what point then do you begin to think about this as a professional career? AC: I had a regular job and I’d had a regular job for a very long time. I began, later on after daughter was born, and all that. I began working with a party band. I initially took vocal lessons and I studied with a woman who sang with the Metropolitan Opera,[Carolyn] June Bonner. Late June Bonner now. But she understood the importance of all kinds of music. So, I was working with her afterwards. But, I had the regular job and one of the guys said you might want to do something with June Bonner, the vocal thing, and then somebody else said there’s a guy who has a band. I’m probably ahead of it. Prior to that I was doing theatre for about three years. It was the guy who was in charge of theatre said well you might want to get in touch with this guy, he has a party band and he works a lot. So, I got involved with him and we worked together for quite a few years. I was the chick singer in the band and, I think, that’s when I kind of started dabbling into jazz and not knowing that I was doing that. I did something, it was probably scatting or something, and one of the musicians, George Kenny at the end of the gig came over and was bowing to me like this. I knew he was into the jazz scene, so apparently, I had done �Ann Caldwell 9 something, but it was just a collection of things I hear. Like I said, jazz didn’t really make its impact on me until about the 1990s. Then I really started to get into it and be involved with it. KT: Where were you working and what years are we talking about when you are kind of doing theatre, but then transitioning into musical performance? AC: Around 1980s, 90s. I was a draftsman. We didn’t have the politically correct stuff going on. I was a draftsman on a board, then, when that changed to computer generated drafting I decided I really don’t want to do that. It was the strain of going to work in the day, running home, changing your clothes, going out and working with the band until late at night, going back home and getting a nap because it wasn’t generally sleep. Getting up, going to work. Hey, we got a gig this weekend. Okay, here we go. We got a gig tonight and then you go and do that. And I actually sat down and said I can't keep doing this. I called it the Nestea plunge. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen the commercial about Nestea plunge where the guy falls in the pool because that’s what he likens the taste of iced tea to a plunge. I took the Nestea plunge and I did what they tell you not to do. That is, don’t quit your... I quit my day job and the following morning I woke up and looked at the ceiling and said what in the heck did I just do? I’ve been doing it and never really looked back. KT: I saw a notice from 1982 in the newspaper in which you’re singing at St. Paul AME in North Charleston, I think, and your billed as a kind of singer/songwriter/folk person because it’s a singer and guitarist. So, at some point you picked up the guitar. AC: I did, and I laid it down quite a few times. That was actually my first solo concert at St. Paul and you’ve got to tell me where you saw that. A lady who worked at �Ann Caldwell 10 the postal office found out that I could sing and she asked would you come and do something? So, it was a children’s concert that I did. I pulled my guitar out, in fact there is a picture, I can't find it now. A drawing that someone had taken with me holding a guitar in one hand and dragging a cross in the other. So, at that point I f I were going to do it for a living I already decided I’m going to be a gospel music singer. So, that’s what I’m going to do. It was just like that. KT: Does that pre-date the party band experience? AC: Yes. KT: What was the name of the party band and about when you joined? That’s something I want to explore a little bit. AC: The party band came after. I performed with the Porgy and Bess production that was done in 1990 after Hurricane Hugo. It was the David Archer Band. He is a booking agent as well. He books different artists. It was kind of interesting and fun. I got to semi-dress up because I didn’t do the cocktail dress thing, that was just not me. And I got to play with some very interesting musicians; George Kenny was one of them, David Archer played the guitar, Charlie whatever his last name was played bass, and a really weird strange drummer. So, not only did I learn how to sing with these guys, I learned the nuances in that life. How musicians can be and all that. It was weird, it was funny, it was interesting. I find all that information a lot more interesting than the music itself sometimes because there are stories there. But, I started working with David Archer. KT: So much I’d like to know about this. Just in terms of your repertoire. I’m �Ann Caldwell 11 assuming you’re doing popular R&B covers of the period. Who are you playing to; clubs, weddings, what are the gigs like? Give us a little bit more of the flavor of the band. AC: It was a party band. You did the weddings, you did the corporate events. Most of it because John Kenny and I were the only two African American players, but most of what we did was cover stuff. Respect played by a predominantly white band is interesting to say the least, but we were doing that kind of stuff. It was the party music. Whatever was coming out of Motown. Mostly The Drifters and what you might call beach music, we call R&B. Others call beach music. Dance stuff. It wasn’t a performance, we were just playing to an audience that was either eating or occasionally they’d dance or whatever. It was background music. If somebody wanted to dance. You’d have the bride and the groom that would come up and they’d do their first dance. For the most part the kids loved the fact that we had this really slick dance floor and the kids would be sliding all over that while you’re playing. KT: I’m thinking about this from the perspective. You’re a mother. You’re coming out of a church context and also had a straight corporate job. Tell me about the night life. Did that pose personal conflicts? You’ve described it as weird and interesting, but say a little bit more about that. AC: I didn’t have much of a night life. Out of high school I didn’t date much. I had a guy that I was dating at the time and thought he wanted to marry me, but he came to his senses and decided not. That’s fine. Then came the other guy. I was married with a child. There wasn’t night life per se. He was a Marine Corps Sargent, so he did his Marine Corps Sargent stuff in the �Ann Caldwell 12 day and came home at night. That was life. Hey, I’ll see you later I’m going on a gig. Make sure Alisson is in bed by such and such a time, I’ll be back. Of course, I’m divorced now, but that was pretty much it. My night life was around the band. If I didn’t have the band I probably wouldn’t have gone out. KT: You said there were some stories from those days, tell us a story that kind of gives us a feel for the band. AC: The drummer, I said was a little strange. He was very meticulous about how he set up his drums. He set them up and then he’d stand back and look at them. Then he’d go and move the snare an inch or so and then he’d sit down and look around again and he’d get up and kind of move something somewhere. Now, we’re all standing here waiting for him to get situated and he keeps doing these little things. You could see the guys going oh God. I found it quite comical. I’m just the chick singer. You’re just going to tell me when to sing and I’ll just sing, but these guys have to wait for you to get set up. Another guy came in, Charlie Chuck, we called him Chuck. Chuck was pretty calm, cool, and mild mannered. But, Chuck walked in one day with his guitar and bag that held something, I don’t know what it was. Slammed his guitar one place, threw the bag off and it made this really loud crashing sound. We’re going what’s wrong with Chuck? What had happened was, on his way there his amp fell out of the back of the car and he had to go back to see if he could find it. He was not a happy camper. It’s stuff like that. KT: I wanted to go back to the influence of June Bonner who is somebody who more people should know about in Charleston, I think. Can you talk a little bit about that �Ann Caldwell 13 relationship and what that meant to you professionally and personally? AC: June had a different teaching style or coaching style. I studied with June for about ten years. This was ten years of walking into her studio doing thirty minutes of vocalizing. But, we would also do some vocalizing, we talk, we vocalize, we talk, we talk, we talk, we talk, we vocalize. I think June’s style of teaching prepared us to be singers not just to sing, but to be singers. In fact, whenever there were auditions everybody knew who the June Bonner students were the minute they walked in the room. They just knew who they were. Again, June appreciated the fact that there was more than one kind of music. This is a woman who sang with the Metropolitan Opera and decided to leave because in June’s words she didn’t want to get so old that they’d have to put her out. She was in her late fiftys/sixties when we first got together. So, she had most of her singers were active in the theatre. They were doing bands. They were doing all kinds of music. It wasn’t unusual to walk into June’s studio and hear them practicing something and you hear all this R&B coming out of the room. June, who could not dance a lick, would be moving around in the room. You’d hear that and I appreciate the fact that she was instrumental in making me a singer. In fact, the second major concert I ever did was a gospel music concert at her club called then, the Coconut Club. I did gospel at the Coconut Club which was at the old Seamen’s Church on the Market. That’s where she was. KT: You worked with her for ten years? At what point does the teaching relationship end? I’m just wondering how does the mentor say to the mentee “that’s it, you’re done”. How does that work, I’m curious? �Ann Caldwell 14 AC: Just like that. That’s it. You’re done. “Ann, you don’t need to come here anymore”. It ended just like that. I started working which made it a little difficult to go to the vocal training thing. We began talking about different things. I taught briefly for a little while, but it was about that simple. Ann, she’s the only one who could take a one syllable word and make it two. Ann, you don’t need to come anymore and away I went. I still saw her. I would still pop by to talk to June because I had to talk to June. If I were having vocal issues I would just June, I’m having this issue, can I come by and let me know what’s going on. We would do that. So, we stayed in contact. KT: Was the end sudden or had you talked about it before? Was it just one day? How did you feel about that? AC: We kind of knew it was coming. It’s kind of like a bad marriage, I guess. The end is coming and again I never stopped seeing June, I just never kept coming as a student anymore. We became friends. She was a mentor friend. I always saw June. Whenever I was performing anywhere June would come and she was careful never to let us know she was coming. I did a production in Atlanta with a group and the group came to Charleston to do the production. June sent this enormous floral arrangement. It covered wherever it was sitting on. Nobody understood, where’d that come from? Oh, that’s from June. I could barely get the thing in the car, but that’s the kind of support that June continued to give to all of her students. KT: You’re imitation reminds me that maybe this is one of your lesser known talents is your ear for accents and mimicry. AC: It’s one of the ways that I amuse myself as a child. �Ann Caldwell 15 KT: How did that develop? AC: It just did. I spent a lot of time by myself. I didn’t consider myself street smart. My brother and sister were. My sister was more street smart than my brother and it just fell by the wayside with me because I didn’t spend a whole lot of time doing school activities and such. I would watch old movies and listening to classical recordings which kind of drove my father crazy because he’s into blue thing. But, he tolerated his crazy oldest daughter’s passion for listening to different things. I would listen to old movies and characters. My thing is “the calla lilies are in bloom”: That’s my Audrey Hepburn thing. But, it was how I amused myself. I wasn’t thinking about it, I just figured everybody must be doing this. KT: So, clearly you have an ear for sounds, music, and voices. AC: A little bit. Just a little. KT: I might be jumping out of order here. AC: I have been. KT: The Magnolia Singers, how does that come about? AC: That was formed by, to be honest with you, a guy I was dating at the time who thought such a group needed to exist. It was about fourteen people strong. When the relationship came to a close, gladly, I kept the group. It was one of those somebody would fall apart and I’d go get them and bring them back. Then somebody else would leave and I’d go get—and I decided let’s not do that. Let’s see how far the group will fall before it stops falling to pieces. We got down to five singers and I left it at five singers. We are now six singers strong, but I left it at �Ann Caldwell 16 five singers. I could pile five singers into a bus, I could throw them into my car if I had to. But, I think, we’re into the double digits now that we’ve been together. We were doing a regular production at the Circular Church called Praise House. But, what has happened is that somebody’s going to school fulltime, somebody’s going into the ministry, somebody else is doing this, that, and the other thing. It got the place where okay, we need to stop right now because there is too much going on. I think we call it burn out. I think there was some burn out and we did our last performances for the season in June. We’ve been doing things off and on. We’ve done some festivals, some concerts, but the group is still intact. KT: But, not doing the regular Circular gig? What was the relationship between that and then Sound of Charleston? Was that the name of the program you did, or was that a whole separate? AC: That’s a whole separate thing. The Sound of Charleston is a production about the history of Charleston. So, they covered the Civil War and I covered the spirituals. The Praise House is mostly the activity that went on in the gathering of the ancestors who composed the music and their praise house experience. KT: Say a little bit more about that, as we talked about this interview we went back and forth over my phrasing of this question or this idea and I still don’t know that I’m there. But, I am curious about the influence of history and culture on Charleston music, specifically gospel and spiritual traditions. Can you talk a little bit about that? To what degree is there a unique Charleston sound with regards to its praise music? AC: It’s kind of hard to explain the unique Charleston sound. It’s one of those things when you hear it you know it’s unique to our area. The music was actually �Ann Caldwell 17 influenced by the history, especially with the spirituals. When you look at why the spirituals exist, they had a lot of reasons to exist. They were coded message songs; Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Wade in the Water. Songs like that were coded message songs that were used when the Underground Railroad was in its heyday. The music expressed feelings, emotions, and conditions. If you listen to it, you’ll hear what was going on around the ancestors. The spirituals is the music of an unhappy people. People think that the spirituals were sung because this was a bunch of happy people. They were not. You’ve got to remember back in those days it was nothing like tranquilizers, Prozac, or Lexapro. They didn’t have all that to make themselves feel good. The phrase was they came together to sing themselves happy and to shout their troubles out. What is amazing to me is after doing that they went right back into the situation that caused them to have to sing and shout. This was their way of surviving. The music is documentation of what’s going on around them. Lots of songs did that. There are folks who say oh that’s just slave music, no listen to it and find out what they’re doing. If you listen to the blues, the blues does the same thing. The blues describe feelings and conditions. The rhythms were used, sometimes in the fields as work songs and I’ve seen them used on chain gangs as well, to set the pace of work. When the song was sung fast the pace of work was fast, when the song was sung slower the pace of work was slower. Sometimes, when they couldn’t stop they would use the slower pace to rest when they couldn’t stop because you could get into trouble if you were not in the right rhythm. If somebody’s working too slow and everybody’s working real fast. You’d get beaten pretty severely. What they do is to use that rhythm to ‘draw �Ann Caldwell 18 level the angel I’m coming down’ (sings) and when you’d speed it up ‘draw member, draw’ (sings). Everybody is doing the exact same thing, so if everybody is slow together nobody’s getting in trouble. When it was used as coded message songs. Swing Low Sweet Chariot, the chariot was the Underground Railroad and when it talks about the chariot swinging low, if something is swinging low it’s close. So, that was the signal that was given whenever it was time to leave the plantation to go up north to Canada which was also referred to in the music as Canaan. It was either called Canaan, home, promise land, heaven. So, the music had its meaning. I would think that life determined what the music was going to be. It’s kind of like feeling bad music, break up music. We know what happens, we break up and we want to hear a song about breaking up. There are artists who write songs about breaking up. It’s the activity that causes the music to be born. KT: Is that African American music? Or is that Low Country music? AC: It was born in the Lowcountry. When you think the slaves came through here, African Americans created it. A lot of it was created here. The musical activity in Charleston covers spirituals, blues, R&B. It was born here because the ancestors, I took to calling them, created this music out of their own life, their hardship. The slavery trade was pretty prevalent here. It is said that Amazing Grace, though the lyrics were created by John Newton it is said that the melody sounds like a west African sorrow chant. I asked myself the question, where would he have heard a West African sorrow chant? He was a slave trader. He’s going to hear it on that boat. So, they brought that here along with the rhythms. KT: As you’re developing as a vocalist, as an artist, had you had the opportunity �Ann Caldwell 19 to spend much time in Johns Island churches or Wadmalaw churches to hear—I’m curious whether there were distinguishing characteristics between the Sea Island experience and the peninsula experience. AC: I’ve even been told that there are. There was a woman that I knew from a church I attended that when she heard a song sung a certain way she said oh they sing that differently out on James Island, or they sing that differently out on Wadmalaw. Yeah, there is a slight bit of difference in how it’s sung on the different islands. Yeah, that does exist. I have sung in those churches where you can kind of hear it. There is a difference. KT: We’re running up against the problem, I think, of talking about music because so much of this is intuitive and you know it when you hear it. You almost hate to reduce it to words. It challenges our ability sometimes, I think, to describe those kinds of nuances. I gather as a musician you feel it instinctively, but it might be hard to actually pinpoint it and say yeah that’s why that sounds differently to me. AC: I think that you kind of want to look at the similarities because when you perform this kind of music in the settings that you do. African American people are very passionate people. They love their power in music, be it spirituals, gospel, R&B, whatever. There’s a reason behind the singing. Nobody just stands and sings. People can relate to the song when it is sung. Even if the former President of the United States sings Amazing Grace people grab hold of that because they connect with the words in the song, the feelings, the emotions, and the activity. We are very animated folks. We have the Usher’s March and the stomp and the ring shout and all that. There is movement. �Ann Caldwell 20 There is a lot of feeling and emotion in it. That’s the thing that makes all of it similar. We don’t even hardly pay attention to the nuances. We just know. We’re just having a wonderful time singing this stuff. KT: Magnolia Singers bill themselves as presenting and correct me on the wording here, but Gullah spirituals. What does that mean? Are you a Gullah artist? AC: A lot of it is commercial now where you use the name. Let’s throw Gullah in here and draw people into it. Gullah is a language. They talk about Gullah and Geechee. Gullah kind of pertains to the inhabitants of the Sea Islands along South Carolina. When you say Geechee then we’re talking of the inhabitants of Sea Islands along Georgia. They are intertwined. You can interchange them. But, it’s the language. When you talk about spirituals as opposed to gospel. Spirituals had their birth in rural America when they were used in churches that didn’t have musical accompaniment. They were out in the fields, you didn’t have that as opposed to the gospel that moved into urban America where you had the accompaniment and the message was now different. With the spirituals, we’re talking about the hope of freedom. Once freedom presented itself and we had it the plantations went belly up. We’re into urban America singing something different. We have a different hope. The ancestors were people who had a lot of hope. A hope of freedom, that came, then a hope of equality. Hearing the good news in the gospel music because that’s what it means good news. The message changed. So, with the Gullah we’re using the language. I’ve heard folks sing Kumbaya. Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya. Lord how come (00:52:14). When I did the theatre, I did a line that said “sing for the (00:52:21) up the sky. �Ann Caldwell 21 Sing for the live oak what stands so high. Sing for the people’s working the ground, (00:52:26) their music (00:52:27) their music. (00:52:28) the sound”. It’s the language of the ancestors. That’s who sang them. So, you’re going to hear that in what you call the Gullah spirituals. KT: It’s a term that changes depending on context. I know that I’ve spoken with an older person from Johns Island for whom Gullah is an insult. That was something that you were called. If you were Gullah it might suggest that you were country or you weren’t sophisticated somehow. But, I think the notion of the term has changed over time and it changes depending on who is talking. AC: Actually, the word Geechee was the offensive word. If you were called Geechee it wasn’t such a good thing. But, then that changed. They are interchangeable. KT: What is the distinction there? What would it mean to be Geechee as opposed to Gullah? AC: I don’t think there’s much of a distinction. KT: Yeah, but why would that be offensive and Gullah not? AC: I’m not sure why and I was kind of amazed myself when I was first introduced. Geechee, hmm, you just Geechee which kind of has the connotation that you’re probably thinking of. KT: A little rough too? AC: It has to do with tribes. The Gullah word possibly comes from the Angola tribe which supposedly was the first tribe that was brought into America for the slave trade. So, it goes back to different tribes. But, it started out being offensive. I don’t think it lasted very long. But, again it divides South Carolina from Georgia. �Ann Caldwell 22 KT: So, you’ve performed for diverse audiences. I’m thinking about not only white/black, but you’ve performed for a lot of tourists. I’m wondering if you just speak to the public response to your singing and whether you see difference in the audience reception and contexts. I am thinking that singing at Mt. Zion is different than teaching at Circular, which is different than singing in an African American church on James Island. Can you say a little bit about that? AC: In regards to the spirituals do you mean? KT: Really just any of your performing and how it’s received by different audiences. AC: It all depends on the arena. There is performance and then there’s background. When you’re in a restaurant be it tourists or locals it’s background. There are those who would like to hear it, but because of the noise going on in that particular arena. Performance wise is totally different. There is not much you can tell about being in a restaurant or a party or wedding reception. People are there for another reason which some folks say aren’t you bothered that people are making so much noise? It’s a restaurant, they have come here to eat, drink, pick up a date, and go home. They are not here to hear me. Where performances are different. I’ve been fortunate to perform for various and sundry different types of people and there are listeners. There are those who like to listen to the music. They like to hear music done well and they respond to it. They are very receptive. Most of my audiences are Caucasian, for spirituals, for anything. People have their style of music. You have your jazz audiences that come out in �Ann Caldwell 23 mass for the jazz. There are those who like the beach music. I had the pleasure of doing a Pete Seeger concert with a friend of mine. There were people everywhere because they could relate to the Pete Seeger’s, so we got to do that music. People like their music. So, they will come out for their music. We did Women and Bowie, Women and Young. We did all these different tribute shows. The funniest one was the Women and Young where he does a song where somebody’s playing a broom. So, they decide I’m the one that’s going to play the broom. I had never heard the song before. So, they said you’re going to play the broom. We found a way to get the broom sound. I’m sitting there and it was weird because you can sense in the audience when people are waiting for something. They are sitting here waiting for the broom solo. All I did was— KT: This was Neil Young? AC: Yeah, he did a song, I can't remember the name of the song. I didn’t even sing it. I was just playing the broom. People have their music that they like. You can sense things from an audience. KT: I have so many more questions to follow up with you, but I do want to open it up to see if there are questions from the group. Anyone want to jump in there? Because I think we’ve got about 10-15 minutes. Yeah, Mr. Galloway. GALLOWAY: You said you have kids, what do your kids do? Did your kids follow in your footsteps at all? AC: I have a daughter and two grandsons. My daughter is in health care. My youngest grandson fancies himself a rap artist. He has been going into the studio. He’s really quite good. The other one is into girls and snakes. �Ann Caldwell 24 KT: Mr. Rice. AC: Good morning. RICE: Going back to what you said when you said the slaves had music. They sung themselves happy and shouted their troubles out and then the chain gang and how their pace determined how fast they worked. Today the singers in this day and age like The Citadel Gospel Choir they sing for the mission of making Jesus famous. We love our Jesus famous. I wanted to ask you what is one of your motivations? What are your reasons for singing? AC: Mine is a gift, a God given gift and I frankly feel obligated to sing. My mission statement is to encourage, enlighten, enhance, engage. As long as I am doing that with anything I do, especially in singing I am fulfilling my purpose. I think there was a line in Chariots of Fire where one of the runners says “God made me to run fast and when I run I feel his pleasure”. God made me to sing. When I sing, there are moments when I feel his presence and his pleasure. It’s a gift he could have given, and probably has, given somebody else in this room. But, that’s my take on it. It is a God given gift. I am obligated to do with it what needs to be done. Whether it’s gospel, blues, jazz, whatever and to keep it clean. There was a time when it wasn’t thought wise to cross over, but in order to get into certain arenas, like I said I thought I was going to be a gospel singer, but the pull wasn’t in that direction. Now, I find myself in arenas in the company of people I would not have been in the company of had I stayed in the gospel genre. Did I answer that? KT: I think of you singing in these tribute shows singing David Bowie and Neil Young. It is my sense that this is something of a new development in Charleston music. �Ann Caldwell 25 These shows that, I think, bring together artists coming from diverse genres, but also these are racially diverse and often times women led initiatives these shows. I am wondering if you can, in your perception, how has the Charleston music scene changed in recent years? What do you think has brought about some of those changes? AC: It’s changed pretty much in the fashion that you’ve said. It brings together divers audiences and its music that everybody can relate to, but I like the fact that we do now have the diverse audiences. Whites as well can come to the gospel concerts. I hear people say all the time man I remember when I was a child I heard black folks singing gospel music and I was afraid to go into the church. What do you think would have happened if I’d have gone in that church? I said they’d have said good of morning, give you a bulletin and tell you to sit down. But, now they are happening in arenas that are comfortable for people to walk into theatres and music halls. A lot of the restaurants now are introducing gospel brunches for people and people are flocking to them. I like the idea that the audiences are now diverse and we’re reaching out to different people that we probably would not have been in the vicinity of. They were listening to them, it’s just that they were listening over here. Charleston, on Sunday morning was the most segregated day of the week and that’s really not the case much anymore, especially with the mega churches and such. KT: Other questions or comments? Anyone? AC: This is your last chance. You’re going to wonder. Woman voice: Ann Caldwell. Ann Caldwell. Then you’ll say oh snap. KT: I have maybe a couple that we can squeeze in. Through the Magnolia Singers, you’ve had some national television exposure? Or do I have that wrong? �Ann Caldwell 26 AC: No, we’ve done the Today Show a couple of times and we sang in the presence of Phylicia Rashad and somebody else who’s name I can't remember, it’ll happen to you when you get this age. But, yeah, we’ve had a little bit of exposure. KT: National TV. I would think more people watch those morning programs than just about anything. AC: I never do. KT: I don’t either. AC: It just goes by too fast. Okay, you get a snippet here and you’re gone. KT: Was that just another gig? Were you anxious around that? AC: Somebody said you’re going to do the Today Show, go do it. Kathy Lee was there and all that. We sang and we were gone. It just comes and goes so fast. You’ve got this many minutes to do something and then get off and go away. KT: I also wanted to know, how has the Emmanuel massacre reflected in through the musical community or how has the musical community changed or responded to the events of the past year-and-a-half? AC: I don’t believe the music has changed. It’s the medicine we lean on. It’s the strength in the music. The music is still doing what the music has always done. It’s the reason Barak Obama, who is not a great singer, can sing “Amazing Grace” and get the response that he gets. If you listen to those lyrics “through many dangers, toils, and snares we have already come. It was grace that brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us on.” The music is still doing what the music has always done. I think the whole incident has drawn us closer as a people and what happened with the Emmanuel Nine is not unique to us. It’s �Ann Caldwell 27 having things happen and immediately lean on the faith. That was the first thing that happened when we all heard that. We just went to prayer. We went into what we usually went into when this kind of tragedy strikes. We’ve been living with this since we set foot in America. You had four little girls that were bombed in a church in Alabama. People who’ve been hung and beaten to death, we always went back to the faith because we believe. It’s the hope that things will one day get better. Who was it, Sam Cooke, did a song about the time that they singed the Civil Rights bill. Change going to come. You always hear that hope. You will always hear the hope in the back. Why do we forgive? Because it’s better to forgive than not. I believe Mandela that said not forgiving is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die. We have to keep going. The opposite of perseverance is to stop. When you stop, when you don’t forgive you can't move on. There is still the hope, even today. We will always hope because that’s the kind of people we are and we keep moving on. We celebrate our little successes along the way. When we finally got freedom that was something we celebrated ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God all mighty, I’m free at last’ (sings). When we got past that and came up to Civil Rights. They had to sing a bill for us to have stuff we should have been born with. Then the Civil Rights songs that preceded Civil Rights and came after Civil Rights. Okay, we celebrate that little victory there and then we move onto the next thing. Now, it’s justice. Justice, in my mind, seems to be the hardest thing for us to have. We �28 Ann Caldwell still don’t feel as though justice is equal, but that’s a victory again we will celebrate when it’s time to celebrate and then move to the next thing. KT: Thank you very much for coming to class. AC: Thank you. KT: Great. End of recording. Edited ML 4/17/2017 � https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/5b3a59e2fb7256b7a7a3fe72033265b3.mp3?Expires=1792627200&Signature=K3MjdZhVIUGKlmJXWHsrQHBCum3zwWfBQDvTDQGnnDjAd0xC8DWI4ShSNDeiYg6FvrPckw5Ubfu7XNr3vKXMYu3tdyI-KM5DLE-UX0NOTFgJ7CNCHw9VojSCLCAmmFeSGDfalj7tEGRR9k3zKwZW4KrcQj4EFnz%7EG3XmWtT6yVsnUmOYt9PbKjUpmddg2FE7YWN8hYRDi5uRSm-QPFWzW-acEVWpeJftkKKtimfyEQ-nzBw1BUou00Bvd-RWRWWvgfYv1vhBQ-eA9yncFr8bHH9xeubTwqX-RWOSEke%7EkAUFhpJsH6NIp6Tz7gohytLPYI9H68cY%7ERGiTCU1dHU98A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e23dd1f6ae9e28743460b402d5120bc4 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/39779/archive/files/09a44c1bd1428b8a791129f7ad851f5e.jpg?Expires=1792627200&Signature=s5UZyyXAWvabSeVXbkkt0GNmWsGskKNYS3mVsDzen-Htmgs5XbioM3OUYn0tjOlp36Z8lL3SLIY-Dc3bdvvl4D8AbPnigm3L44C01DMkpcjAyu6RsfP7kXLhF6-%7EZ0CDmoFT4LeTJgMTdNEpd6MF065VqtSjTGy8MQunTB1kTX-cV-vOM3LdsyEMtO0hfKZHZFW8gyvR%7EojmmjX-4Pz1giOm6%7EVkU6FBcHG8VWhvNBOS-irRRqFJhoMCtoCwmXdsvNxG%7ESQf%7E8y9%7Ea8K3jDpPLUkIJ5K-BVVwKmQ2C4Nc8a55rSHmveZT-k2k4p62zVXTxL3gScUCPUAIbJcgudpBw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 331c5e362ce27a2acca95c5cb1b7eb39 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource The oral histories in this collection were produced by The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel. Founded in 2008, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel seeks to deepen understanding of the Lowcountry’s rich history and culture through the gathering and presentation of recorded memories from area residents.<br /><h3>Search Tips</h3> Interviews may be browsed by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting "View all items".<br /><br />When using the search bar, we recommend putting quotations around your search term, and selecting the Boolean search option, as illustrated here:<br /><p><img src="https://gdurl.com/aYPj" alt="aYPj" /><br /><br />To view interviews of a specific theme, please see the search tips in each series below.</p> <h3><strong>The Citadel in War and in Peace<br /></strong></h3> With generous support from the <a href="http://www.schumanities.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Humanities Council of South Carolina</a>, The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel collected thirty interviews with Citadel alumni regarding their experiences during WWII. Journalist and historian Jack Bass conducted the interviews during the Fall of 2008.They serve as a powerful testament to the veterans' experiences and their critical contributions to the war effort.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- World War II"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Korean War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- Vietnam War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The Second Gulf War"</li> <li>"The Citadel in War and in Peace -- The War in Afghanistan"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Working Charleston</strong></h3> Working Charleston documents the on and off job experiences of the longshoremen and lawyers, the bartenders and carriage drivers, hospital aides and high tech workers who make Charleston among the nation's prime tourist destinations and vital centers of global trade.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /><ul><li>"Working Charleston"</li> <li>"Charleston City Workers"</li> <li>"Lowcountry Foodways"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</strong></h3> <span><span>These interviews explore how community activism continues to shape modern life in the South.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:</em><br /></span></span> <ul><li>"Charleston and the Long Civil Rights Movement</li> <li>"Civil rights movement--South Carolina"</li> <li>"African Americans--Civil Rights--South Carolina--Charleston"</li> </ul><a target="_blank" href="https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/193" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a> <h3><strong>Las Voces del Lowcountry</strong></h3> <span><span>This project is designed to raise the profile of the Hispanic/Latinos who call the Lowcountry home and to promote a rational and humane conversation regarding immigration, education, and employment policies.<br /><br /><em>*To search interviews in this series, use the following terms utilizing the Boolean search option:<br /></em></span></span> <ul><li>"Las Voces del Lowcountry"</li> <li>"Latin Americans--Southern States"</li> <li>"Hispanic Americans--Southern States"</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Women in World War II</strong></h3> <em>*To search this series, type "Women in World War II" into the search bar, using the Boolean search option.<br /></em> <ul><li>"Women in World War II"</li> <li>"Women--Employment History"</li> <li>"World War, 1939-1945--Participation, female"</li> </ul> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kieran Walsh Taylor Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ann Cadwell Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 12 minutes Location The location of the interview Charleston, South Carolina Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History of Ann Cadwell, interviewed by Kieran Walsh Taylor, 27 January, 2017 Subject The topic of the resource Women musicians Women musicians, Black African American musicians African Americans--South Carolina Description An account of the resource Singer and storyteller Ann Caldwell was born in Denmark, South Carolina in 1952. Her family moved to Charleston when she was three years old. Her early musical memories relate to church music and the long hours she spent listening to gospel and R&B on the radio. However, her interest in pursuing a professional musical career would develop much later. She was an adult when she had her first solo concert at St. Paul AME Church in the City of North Charleston in 1982. In the interview, Caldwell recalls the challenges of being a working mother and a party band singer as well as her experiences singing with the David Archer Band. She also talks about the Magnolia Singers, a Charleston-based vocal group she founded, which gained national recognition. Caldwell reflects about what it means for her to perform Gullah Spirituals, the music of her ancestors to different audiences. She discusses her participation in programs and events with musicians of different styles and traditions such as the Women & Series at the Music Hall and talks about what it takes to be a working musician in Charleston. Finally, she reflects about the Charleston music community response to the Mother Emanuel tragedy and affirms, “I don’t believe the music has changed. It’s the medicine we lean on. “ Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Charleston Oral History Program at the Citadel Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Working Charleston Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Citadel Archives & Museum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-01-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Materials in The Citadel Archives & Museum Digital Collections are intended for educational and research use. The user assumes all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of copyright. For more information contact The Citadel Archives & Museum, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, 29409. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://citadeldigitalarchives.omeka.net/items/show/611 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Charleston (S.C.)