A Quote by Yusef Lateef

I started in high school with a teacher there. I also took lessons at the Conservatory of Music in Detroit. Detroit was very motivating. There were a lot of local people who inspired me like Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Roy Brooks, Donald Byrd, etc.
You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.
I didn't have drama in high school. So when I graduated high school and started at Wayne State in Detroit, I told my parents I was going to major in theater. And they were like, 'OK. Why? You've never done it.' But, it was just what I wanted, and they came to see my very first show and, from then, completely supported me.
Detroit is drunken idiots. It was no surprise to me. I performed with Kenny Rogers for one year as his opening act, and I got to visit every major American city and notice the audience, and Detroit was one of the worst.
There was a fairly big difference between Detroit and Beverly Hills. I remember this. Detroit actually was a prosperous bustling city when we moved here in 1941. But the first day in Detroit, you always wore a shirt and a tie to school. And I wore a shirt and a tie to Beverly Hills High School, and a girl came up to me and said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Detroit." And she said, "And you won't be wearing a tie tomorrow, will you?" And I said, "You're absolutely correct." So that was my first adjustment to a slightly more casual environment.
I feel like I've been doing performing my entire life. I started taking music lessons and singing when I was about ten. I didn't have one of those creepy stage moms that made me do stuff. I started bands at a pretty young age and played with my friends back in Detroit. I've always known that I wanted to do this. It was all I was ever interested in doing. I never had, outside of music, any extracurricular activities that I took part in.
My eight years in Detroit, obviously, were my most successful years managing. I think that Pittsburgh and Detroit are probably very, very similar. We kinda rekindled the fire of baseball in Pittsburgh. We did the exact same thing in Detroit.
There's a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out.
Between 2012 and 2016, Donald Trump earned 14,000 more votes than Mitt Romney did in Detroit. It was wonderful to have a candidate in our party come to Detroit and campaign and actually show up and invest time there even though he probably didn't think he was going to win Detroit.
I loved Queen, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, and people like Barbara Streisand. The thing with me is that classical music was also an inspiration. I took piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels for 10 years.
I went to Detroit Public Schools: Harms Elementary, Bennett, which is now called Phoenix Academy. This is all in Southwest Detroit. I graduated from Southwestern High School, so I'm a 'Prospector,' which is what we used to call each other.
I can read in any book and newspaper about the city of Detroit, but I want to hear what the people in Detroit have to say about Detroit. My best education is actually talking to people.
I'm from the Detroit area, just north of Detroit. But then I went to boarding school in northern Michigan, so a little bit colder up there. But beautiful, very beautiful.
I grew up on the west side of Detroit - 6 mile and Wyoming - so I was really in the 'hood. And I would go to school at Detroit Waldorf, and that was not the 'hood. Growing up in Detroit was good. I had a good perspective, a well-rounded one, and not being one-sided.
I kind of grew up with hip hop and of course being from Detroit I'm a Motown man. Music is in our blood. When you're from Detroit, music is in your DNA.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about four years old. My parents were both musicians. So I took piano lessons. I didn't like the lessons very much, but I was enchanted by music. Music always transported me somewhere. Singing made feel good and being able to play the piano made me feel good.
I grew up in the city of Detroit, where a lot of people didn't have work opportunities, but they were good, hard-working people, including I had a single mom who took care of me and my brother.
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