Smitty: Sometimes I get e-mail and phone calls from people—
DS: Mm-hmm.
Smitty: --asking how they can best help their children get more involved in music and how they can get them to perhaps be more involved in their music lessons, you know, piano lessons or whatever the case may be.
DS: Mm-hmm.
Smitty: And I refer them to individuals like yourself.
DS: Oh…
Smitty: I said look at the influence that their parents made on them. I said at least if you don’t want to emulate what they did, at least take a lesson from that. Look at what influenced them at an early age.
DS: Yes.
Smitty: And then formulate a plan to help your children that way because so many great singers and musicians like yourself have told me that at a very early age, the house was filled with music. There were these great albums from Nat King Cole or Miles Davis or—
DS: Yes.
Smitty: --John Coltrane, whoever it was.
DS: Mm-hmm.
Smitty: And they never forgot those wonderful things, and I think as adults now, we go back to those things that our parents thought perhaps we were not listening to and we’re using those tools and those great memories and experiences that our parents gave us back then now to shape our lives today.
DS: I know. It’s quite wonderful and especially with my mother, who died at age 31, and I was 13 years old when she passed away, but even still, to be able to be influenced by such great music, it’s just fabulous.
Smitty: Yes.
DS: Lovin’ it, yeah.
Smitty: And you, at an early age, were just phenomenal because what you did at age 13 and in your teenage years was just incredible because I listened to “Danny Boy” and I listened to “September in the Rain” and it’s like wow! It’s like when Diane Schuur shows up for the audition, everyone else may as well go home, you know? (Both laugh.) It’s over, you know? But talk about how you first discovered this wonderful voice that you have.
DS: When I was about two years old and just barely walking and talking, although I did talk as an adult, even back then I would prattle off all the different things that would happen on news radio, like if President Eisenhower had a slight cold, I’d come out and talk about that and things. I started listening to all these wonderful artists and I would go into the closet, literally go into the closet (both laugh), after my parents had gone to bed and I would start trying to emulate the things that I’d hear. Of course, Mom and Dad would come out and tell me to shut up, but I’m glad I didn’t pay attention. (Both laugh.)
Smitty: Isn’t that amazing?
DS: Yeah, it is.
Smitty: So with all these great influences and voices, how did singing become something that you were so fond of?
DS: Just over time, the more experience that I got at it, I just kept working on it basically. And to get the rhythm sense, of course, I didn’t in those young, young days, didn’t have a set of drums, I would kinda like rock back and forth and then kind of like—I don’t know how I knew about the two and four-beat, but I knew enough to just kinda clap my hands against my chest, not on the one and three but on the two and four.
Smitty: That’s incredible.
DS: Yeah, and I’d take spoons and knives and just clap them together and just do anything that I could to make kind of like a rhythm. So that’s how that happened.
Smitty: Very cool. Talk to me about “September in the Rain” at the Holiday Inn in Tacoma, Washington, in 1964.
DS: Okay.
Smitty: That must’ve been quite an experience.
DS: Oh, it was.
Smitty: (Laughs.)
DS: That was one of the tunes I didn’t forget the lyrics on. I forgot the lyrics on another tune that I did. “Unforgettable” I forgot some of the lyrics. (Both laugh.) You can hear my mom in the background going “Oh my God,” you know?
