badewanne oval bilder
- (fbe) so i don't knowif you remember this, but recently you provided us with some pictures of yourself of when you were younger.- oh no! (laughing) - oh, yes. - (fbe) here's the first photoyou provided. - oh my goodness.i think i was 12. we lived in a small town,in a rural town, so there were always chores to do. plumerville, arkansas.
it's about 50 miles south of little rock. so it wasn't even 1,000 people in population. - aw. (laughing) i was eight years old.i was in the third grade. and my mother usedto set my hair in pin curls. we lived at this time in a house. it was at the edge of the vineyards in ontario. abandoned vineyards,which is now all the ontario international airport.
but anyway, we'd play hide-and-seek in there and it was a spooky placeand i remember racing bikes. - i think i was 12 in thisbecause i was in the boy scouts. you won't believe what troop i was in. you know, when you're in the boy scouts, you're in troop number such-and-such. do you know about that?i was in troop 69. i was in the beaver patrol, troop 69. never thought about ituntil years later,
and then i remembered--i was trying to impress a girl in college or something. "hey, baby, i was in troop 69, beaver patrol." get outta here, you know? it was a carefree and wonderful existence. - so i am 17 and i am in a class of 21 graduates, so it was a small townwith a small school. i had a good time in high school. i was voted to be the most popularand most likely to be successful
by my high school peers. yeah. (laughing) and here i am on elders react. (laughing) - that's my high schoolgraduation photo. my favorite thing about high schoolis i competed in forensics and speech, and i did pretty well in that and, you know, proms, and i marriedmy high school sweetheart. in those days, you married young, mostly. a lot of people did.
things were different then. you were expected to be a mother--you know, a wife and a mother. - that was at graduationfrom high school, when i was 17. i graduated fromhigh school very young. i graduated from high school in 1958. things were totally different then. you had the draftalso coming up in a few years, so you had to go to school.
so basically, i was hopingto be successful and find out what i really should do by going to college. - i had moved to washington, dc,and was working, and i started singing. i made my singing debut at the l'enfant plaza hotel in washington, dc, in a little lounge called the apple of eve. i joined a cuban jazz combocalled the al martinez jazz combo. that's how i made my singing debut in washington, dc.
gee, i'm going down memory laneand it feels good, too, to talk about it. - i went into radio at one pointand this was out in san bernadino. they wanted us to do a challenge,the two djs and me. i was the newsperson. so the people who owned this carsaid, look, we're going to train you how to race, so i raced around that oval a lot, and i figured out how you accelerate,how you make the turn, how you do this and that.
i did pretty darn good. - there it is. there's my college swim team,a couple of my buddies. i wonder if they're still alive. i haven't seen them for 50 or 60 years. that's ira gruber on the leftand jack goldsmith in the middle. i was a distance swimmer. i don't know if you don't knowwhat that means, but i swam the 1500 meters.
i was actually in a rock and roll band on the weekend. so i'd swim, we'd go to swim meets, come back, and saturday nights,i was in a rock and roll band and that's one of the waysi paid my way through college. phil painter and the knockabouts.you've probably heard of them. - when i left the al martinez jazz combo, and i started my own jazz and blues band, called the ruby haze jazz and blues band, and performed all around washington, dc,
and new york, florida. and this photo herewas taken in san diego, where i was headliner at the adams avenue street fair festival. there was a point in therewhere i got married and i divorced and became a single parent, and i put my career on holdfor family matters, and for about 15 years. then i returned to my singing career.
i took out an equity loanand went into the studio and made my first album. - this is of me as a teacher. i taught middle school and high school history. if you care about the kids,if you're willing to do the work, the size of the class isn't what matters. it's the caring that matters. and we had a good time, you know? i'm very proud of the work i did.
- i'm marching off to vietnamon the last day of boot camp. i was in the navy in vietnam. so i was on a ship off the coast of vietnam, going back and forth,stopping people and shooting things and stuff. they found out i could swim,so i was the guy that would go in the waterif any planes crashed to get the pilots out. i was in the navy six years,but two years on active duty.
and it's something i did because i thought that's what you had to do, you know. you were kind of an automaton in those days. you did what you were supposed to do. you went to school, you went to college, you went in the service,you got a job, a wife, and you had kids. i did all that. i didn't talk about this for 30 years.
i'm surprised i'mtalking about it now. - (fbe) it becomes easier and easier over time to capture moments from your life. what is it like for you to come from a time where photography wasn't as easily accessible to now being able to captureevery little piece of your life and have your opinions heard on this show? - it's super interesting. it's like there's no area of your lifethat isn't recorded somewhere,
and it's just a very different and very in-a-fish-bowl kind of life than it ever was. things are just more accurate and more open. everybody knows about themand i think it's better. - for independent artists,these are all the tools we need-- photography, videos. it seems like that evolved right along with the new movement of the independent artist. someone miles awayin other countries can find you
and can invite you to comeand do a very exciting, exotic gig somewhere. - that's just one aspectof the differences of me growing up and today, absolutely. communication and phone, pictures. pictures were very hard to--it wasn't that easy. you had to set it up. you know, i really hada great childhood and i grew up in a great time.
i'm looking forward to a terrific next 10 or 15 years. you got to keep busy,have people to love, and i think you needto have things to look forward to. that's my philosophy now. ♪ (ragtime outro) ♪