I was given a horn at an early age. I never really got a chance to think about doing anything else until I was about 18, when I realized I could do something else if I wanted to. In my teens, I was rolling in it.
I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.
I auditioned for 'The Voice' because I really wanted to try and figure out a way to get myself out there. I really couldn't imagine doing anything else - music was the only thing that I really clung to.
I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.
You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that's left for you or to make one of your own.
For me, at a very young age, I knew I wanted to be in the entertainment industry; I wanted to be an announcer. I was very smitten at an early age with the voice I heard coming from a radio.
I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.
I was into music from a very early age, and I was also - I don't really talk about this that much - really into horses. I learned a lot about rhythm and about voice from that.
Some people say that suicide is a sin, but I have never believed that. I say it's God's way of calling certain folks home early. It's much nicer than an awful accident, where the rest of us are left wondering if the person really wanted to go.
Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.
[I was] particularly eager to give voice to the women of my mother's place and generation, who grew up in turn-of-the-century, privileged New England households, who really never had a chance to flower and assess themselves and find out who they were. More than anything, I wanted to give voice to the sort of anger that women of that generation could never express for themselves.
I decided at age 5 to start acting and I have never wanted to do anything else.
I never wanted to do anything else but fight, when I was a kid. I never had any broader perspective of my own perspective. I didn't know anything about anything else. I just wanted to fight until I could fight no more, and then I wanted to own a bar and drink and tell war stories.
If you're trying to get into the sports business, you really have to find a niche.
In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.
From my childhood, I never wanted to do anything else but create music. From my first piano to setting up my studio, all I ever wanted was to give it all my time.