June 28, 2023 • 43 mins
Questlove Supreme salutes Black Music Month in style with a special interview with Bill Clinton. The 42nd President of the United States and Founder and Board Chair of the Clinton Foundation brings some vinyl with him to the in-studio interview as he discusses his love of Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and more—and recalls the actions he took in the White House to support that passion. While chatting with Team Supreme, President Clinton revisits his saxophone playing on Arsenio Hall, and offers some powerful advice and wisdom to people on how to go about their lives.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, kids,
you ready like you?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You ready like you, Everything's roll, Let's go, we jump,
let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Here we go.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Suprema Sun Sun Suprema roll Calm Suprema Sun Sun Supremo.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Roll call, Suprema.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Sun Sun Supremo, Role Calm, Suprema Son Son Suprema Roll Call.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
My name is Questlove, Yeah, and you are you Yeah?
And that's Team Supreme.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And he's forty two.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Supreme So Suprema roll Calm, Suprema su Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
My name is Fante Yeah, and I'm gonna keep it
roll yeah with the realist President.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, out of archists.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Suprema son Son Suprema roll call, Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Role Call.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
My name is Sugar, Yeah, first president I ever met.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh you just reminded me.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (01:15):
I haven't filed my taxes.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yet, Suprema So Supremo. Roll call, Suprema So Suprema roll.
Speaker 7 (01:24):
Call paid Bill.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, and I got to thinking, yeah about my second
favorite bill. Yeah, President Clinton Supremata Supreme Suprema roll.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
It's my ear. Yeah, and it's a special day. Yeah,
our first press. Yeah, Bill Clinton all Day, roll.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Call Supremo, So Son Supremo, roll call, Supremo Son Son.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Supremo roll call.
Speaker 8 (01:57):
My name is Bill. Yeah, Yeah, I know the drill. Yeah,
I'm glad to be here. Yeah, calls music is there?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Take it up.
Speaker 8 (02:08):
Sun Sun Subpreme roll call Subpremo.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sun Sun Subprema roll Calm Subprema, Son Sun Subpremo, roll
call Subprema Son Sun Subprema roll call.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, Congratulations, we have our first Here we go.
I will say, it's it's a point. We just do
a Griselda right, exactly. It's amazing how the world works sometimes. Uh,
(02:47):
for no particular reason. You know, we we've been away
from each other for three years and decided, hey, it
might be cool for us to get back together and
do some stuff in person. And then life throws you
a curveball. And I I will say, probably no less
than twenty four hours ago, we got a call straight up.
And I'll be honest with you, because I was preparing
(03:07):
for another guest, and right before I went to sleep
last night, I read my itinery I'm like, wait a minute,
that's tomorrow. I thought that was like in the future,
because when you threw it at me, I was like, ah,
this will never happen.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
So like no, we all went.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Like what February thirtieth of yeah, nineteen seventy six, Like
that's going to happen. I will be saying, yeah, this
is happening. And our guest today is the very first
time that you're nervous. Yeah, yeah, this is the very
(03:43):
first time I stepped in the voter booth to exerciseise
ye write.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Our president voted for your age time.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I wasn't Oh the second time. Wait, how I don't
know what your age is. On papill I am eighty
six years old, Okay, I mean sometimes you seem younger
than me. Then when you have a beard.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
It looks like you're accountant, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So I don't know how old you are.
Speaker 7 (04:07):
But you know my.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
First vote was for ducacis believe it or not, that's
how old you are.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's how old you are. Come up anyway, Live in
CDM studios is where we are, and we are very
honored to have music lover musician. Uh and incidentally, are
the forty second president of these United States, William Jefferson
Clinton one A quest of.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
What is happening?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So how are you today?
Speaker 8 (04:39):
I'm good, I'm better now. This is I didn't find
out about this much before you.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
You were like an hour before. Oh, let's let's hit
down just a casual question, like what what did you
do this morning? Like what's your morning routine like as
of lately?
Speaker 8 (04:53):
Well lately, I get up in the morning and I
read the papers. I'm old five, I'll read the papers.
Get my phone and I read the papers I didn't read.
I read my local West Sister County paper and the
New York Times and paper. Then I read the Washington
Post online, and then I look and see what other
(05:14):
articles there are, and then I work puzzles for a
while because it's good for you. Like I do that
word puzzle in New York Times every day.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Are you a wordle person or a New York Times
crossword person or.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
I don't do that. I only do the cross word
on Sunday. But I do wordle, and I do the
wordle nice, and I do the spelling Bee, the spelling
Bee every day.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I would like to think that I have an expansive vocabulary,
but you know, it's so frustrating. I give up after
like the seventh word unpaid bill. You strike me as
a person that can at least get to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I can I go in on the the this one. Yeah,
I can't stop. It's just like you can.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
It's pretty hard to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It was hard today. There was a lot of there was.
Every time there's an X, what, it's like, what the
hell's going to do? What's a vow for today?
Speaker 7 (06:01):
Well, there's a bunch of vwel so it's.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
A what's in the middle? Oh a, oh, well wait,
and you'll say that's hard.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
It was like I'm gonna no one's gonna listen.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It's like oxidation annotation notation there too.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, during the pandemic, you'll be shocked at you know,
what you do for entertainment, especially because I was on
a farm with new cable. So that's when I started
my rabbit holing inside of crosswords and that sort of thing.
So you're a word o person.
Speaker 8 (06:28):
Too, Yeah, I started that later. I did that the
spelling Bee for a long time and now normally around
dinner time, he'lly and I'll get back together and between
the two of us we can get them all what
So we have a conspiracy for spelling baby. We didn't
do it yesterday, and I didn't get them all yesterday either.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So you like to do it at nighttime, around dinner
or first thing in the I'm the first thing in
the morning person.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
I like to do it first thing in the morning,
and then whichever ones I don't have, I'll just put
it away and think about it and start working. Because
I do. I call people in the morning when I'm
fresh and thoughtful, and then I'm trying to finish two
books I've been working on and it's been very frustrating,
so I do that in the middle of the day.
(07:15):
I take time off and take away. I try to
take a walk every day.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
My day is determined on if I'm able to solve wordle.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
One thing it frustrates me. The other day I got
three of the five letters in order off the first work,
which I put in a rose. And I got three
of the first and I got R O and then E,
and I literally went through five permutations before I got
to write one. I was going nothing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You wanted to throw your phone right it was broke.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
I think was a wordle And I went through all
you know wrote I don't know any other words. That's
what makes you feel you don't know what he's dumb, unlucky,
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It has a way of determining how good or rotten
your day is going to be. So I try to
do it now in the afternoon.
Speaker 8 (08:06):
So it can't spoil your morning.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, you know. See, you walked in with two albums
and being as though we're jazz fanatics here at Quest
of Supreme, where I'm curious to see what you brought
to the table. Why did you choose?
Speaker 8 (08:23):
This is an old Sunny Rollins album? You can see
I had to type it up. I see, I had
it forever and it's the first one he did on
Brazilian music. I once told Rollins that I love the
album he did in Harlem in the late nineties. He
(08:45):
said it wasn't worth of them, and I said, what
was the matter with it? He said, I didn't learn anything.
I didn't do anything new. There. He is, you know,
at his age, and he's just still doing things new.
So this is great.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
What's the name of that album?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
President's Sunny Rowlings brings.
Speaker 7 (09:02):
The jazz new rhythm from South America.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Oh okay, do you often get disappointed when you meet
notable people that have done things amazing that you think
are amazing, and then they're just dismissive of it. Like
that often happens here at the show where you know,
I sing you did, and they'll just be like, man, whatever.
Speaker 8 (09:21):
One of the things that I really loved when I
was president is nearly anybody, I'll come play for you
if you ask me. And one day I looked up.
I was sitting at my desk and I looked up,
and then we had the door open to the outside.
Dave Brewbeck was standing there and he was, you know,
(09:41):
getting you know, some award. Not the Kennedy Center war. Oh,
he got the National Medal of Arts that you're So
I went out and shook hands with him, and I
told him how much I liked him, And I said,
you know, when I was fifteen years old, you've played
about seventy miles from home. So I went to your
concert in Arkansas because he was friends with the guy
(10:05):
who was a great music teacher there, jazz fanatic. He
looked at me and kind of skeptically said, he said,
besides take five, what's your.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
People?
Speaker 8 (10:16):
What's your favorite rubeks on? I thought always giving me.
I said blue Rondo. He said nobody knows that. I said,
it's a great song. He said, hum the bridge.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh, he's one of those people was so.
Speaker 8 (10:31):
I hummed the Bridge for it, and three days later
he sent me a great autograph copy of the chart
and that still hangs in my music room today. Wow.
Just because I knew the Bridge from BLUEO.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Wow, that's terrifying. Yo, that's the one you know, don't want?
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You know?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
What does that like? Does that a lot of where
I'll just take the compliment and be like, you know,
because they'll say something skill like, yo, man, I have
bootleg and then to reach the person that actually wants
evidence that you really believe, And then I'm like, what
if it winds up being a pie in the face
moment and then you can't say, then how's the conversation going.
(11:12):
I'm glad you knew his history, right.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
Me too.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
What other records did you bring in there?
Speaker 8 (11:19):
I got Dizzy Gillespie's New Way, which also has a
couple of resilient songs on it, including the Morning of
the Carnival from Black Corfea, which is one of my
favorite songs. I think it's one of the most beautiful
songs that were written.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
A love Brazilian music. Mister President was like, my favorite.
Oh I'm like this, No, no, I said, the music,
not that.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
This is a record of Jimmy Smith. I think he
is the greatest sas organist who ever lived. And he
used to play at a place called the Cellar Door
in Washington when I was in college, so I would
go and listen to him, and the first time he
started playing, I thought that organ and was going to
walk out of this room all by itself. Oh, he
(12:04):
was unbelievable. What year was this, sixty four, sixty five,
something like that. And this is my favorite jazz samba record.
This is the first record done by Stan Gatz and
Charlie Birds out of Brazil.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
So when did you fall in love with Brazilian jazz?
Speaker 8 (12:26):
I was interested in jazz, and I started listening to
bigger jazz bands when I was six or seven years old,
and my folks had a record player and they'd go
away and I'd just get these records, just record after
record and sit there on the floor and listen to them.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
So was your parents collection?
Speaker 8 (12:43):
Yeah? And then I started ordering Downbeat magazine when I
was in grade school, and because they asked me, I
started out on clarinet, and they asked me to shift
to saxophone because the school needed a saxophone in the band.
And I fell in love with and I started reading Downbeat,
and I read it all through high school, and when
(13:05):
I could, i'd supplement the record collection.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
You know, did you have aspirations of being a professional
musician or did you just love it?
Speaker 8 (13:12):
Absolutely? Yeah, I would. I went to summer camp at
the university and they had some good teachers, and I
would sometimes play twelve hours a day. I inflayed, my
guns were practically bleeding, and I loved it. But when
I was sixteen, I looked in the mirror one day
and I said, will you ever be as good as culturing?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
How are you the president? Talking yourself out of your
own dream? That young?
Speaker 8 (13:44):
Oh? I didn't talk to myself. I was conflicted. I
wanted to do three things in my life. I wanted
to be a doctor that helped people that didn't have
access to healthcare. I didn't want to, you know, be
a rich doctor. I wanted to get out there. I
wanted to be Paul Farmer. When I grew up, I
wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a musician,
(14:07):
and I wanted to be in politics because I could
see when I was a boy how much conflict there
still was in America. So I remember like it was yesterday.
I was sixteen looking in a mirror, just begun to
shave felt big. And the reason I asked this question is,
you couldn't make a living as a jazz musician in
(14:31):
the sixties unless you did the clubs. You know, nobody
had these massive record contracts. You didn't a jazz musicians
didn't feel you know what like Kenny g later made
a lot of money, you know, going around. You couldn't
make a living unless you did the clubs. And so
your chances of becoming addicted the drugs were roughly three
(14:54):
times your chances of having a successful family and raising
kids that were healthy. I mean, you had to. It
was a big risk. As Coltrane and lots of others
found out, he was a genius.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Have you ever got to witness him in person?
Speaker 8 (15:08):
No, I never heard Cold Training person. I do have
at home an autographed album that a friend of mine
found for me, where his face is like has gone
into running paint, fascinating looking album. I never heard him.
I never heard gets. I did herb Alfred, he gets
(15:30):
his last saxophone and he had it in a safe.
So he sent me a note when I got elected,
and he said, if you come out here, I'll let
you play it. But I never got to do it.
But anyway, I just thought that it wasn't worth the risk.
And I did love it, but I had a sort
(15:54):
of troubled home growing up, and I knew i'd be
disappointed in my life if I didn't, you know, have
a child and do a halfway decent.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Job and a musicians not the salary that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
How old were you when you left Arkansas? Like how
long did you live there before you went to college?
Speaker 8 (16:14):
From my birth, I was born in a little town
of Arkansas, and we moved to a bigger town when
I was six after the first grade, and I stayed
there until I graduated from high school and I went
to college in Washington for four years. Then I lived
in England for two years, which was a.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Great part of what part of England did you live?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
I was in school in Oxford, so I got a
scholarship to go to school there, and that was great
because it was in the middle of all the Vietnam
War to do, you know? And I kept waiting to
be drafted every month and I was called once, but
the law allowed you to finish the year you were
in if you were in school. And then the lottery
(16:59):
came in. I got a high number.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Did you go to the club scene a lot in
London when you were living there and going? No?
Speaker 8 (17:04):
But I went to. Like we were talking about concerts,
I tried to find whatever music I could, and I
remember the most memorable one for me was when Mahaja
Jackson played the Albert Hall, which is this great old
Victorian venue, and you know, the country England was deeply divided,
(17:26):
America was deeply divided. Everybody was upset, kids were cynical,
and all of a sudden, I go to the but
I was determined to hear Mohata Jackson. So I go
with a friend who knew nothing about her music. I said,
you're going to love this. You thank me for the
rest of your life. So were we got a seat,
you know, pretty far back. But I looked around and
(17:49):
most of the people there were young people, and she
started singing and by about the third song, half the
audience was crying. I mean, she was so enormously powerful.
She just was, She just radiated her.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Still gospel music, right, you think to be a bunch
of kids.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
Then at the end of the performance, they stormed the
stage and they were like seven or eight deep right
on the stage, screaming like they were groupies at a
rock concert and begging her to keep singing and begging her.
And she sang another song or two and then finally
had to leave. You know, but and she was just
her standing alone on the stage. You know, the way
she did it was amazing. It was one of the
(18:32):
most amazing concerts I ever saw. Just she was something.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Well I wanted to know, like what your music experience
was in Arkansas, like because you seem pretty open minded
to just art and all that stuff, Like how does
one do that from Yeah.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
Well it was we weren't all the same, you know,
it's not like it even today. It's more well to
the right of where it was in the nineteen seventies.
Most Southern states are in the small towns in rural
areas because of what's happened to the information ecosystem and
a lot of other things. But I remember when I
(19:17):
went to the BREWBYX concert, I was telling you about that.
He was friends with the band director down there who
had worked with Stan Kenton, and when they did all
that groundbreaking musical work. You know, in the fifties, there
were always chances to do that. I've Ray Charles once
when he was kind of on the slow circuit in
(19:38):
a little venue in western Arkansas. When I was in college,
I heard Ray Charles sing where Marion Anderton did in
Constitution Hall. She wanted to sing in Constitution Hall. You
remember that Daughters of American Revolution drove her out. So
(19:58):
Harold Ikey's the interior secretary for Roosevelt, whose son worked
for me in the White House. Amazing. He gave her
the Lincoln Memorial.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
The famous.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
When Ray Charles came in nineteen sixty seven, he sang
in Constitution Hall. And I call this woman that I
had just met, and on a lark, I asked if
she wanted to go to this concert. She was about
six feet tall, and we got we can. By the
time I got the tickets, we had to sit way
(20:34):
up in the back on the second floor, and we
were only There were fewer than ten white people there. Yes,
it was unbelievable, though I never forget he played, you know,
his repertoire, and he saved Georgia till near the last,
and he plays the introduction on the piano and didn't
(20:56):
do anything. He holds it in the crowds and then
finally he just reaches up to microphone he said Georgia
like that, and the crowd went nuts, just nuts, and
it was And I was so excited at that Ray
Charles concert. I remember it was June the twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty seven. I so remember where it was that
(21:19):
I stayed up till three o'clock in the morning. I
couldn't go to sleep, and I went out and raided
three in three miles so I could sleep a little.
And I saved that ticket stub for I don't know
ten fifteen years. I kept it in my billfa wow.
And I was so grateful that I finally got to
meet him, you know, when I was president, and we
(21:39):
became friends. And Quincy Jones was helpful to me because
he was a friend of mine. And you know, he
and Charles knew each other in Seattle when Quincy was
fourteen and Charles was seventeen, and Ray Charles got himself
all the way from Central Florida where he was a
boy as a blind man, because he was not blind
(22:03):
in his early years, but he was blind, and he
took a bus. He said he wanted to get as
far away from central Florida as he could without having
to leave the country, so he went to Seattle, and
Quincy said, you know, I decided I could make it music.
I mean, here's this blond guy who's seventeen and he's
(22:26):
got his own apartment. He's got three suits in the closet,
and he's got a girlfriend. And that was a great story,
and I genuinely came to not only admire but have
an enormous affection for Ray Charleson a couple of weeks
before he died, and this is long after I left
the White House and I knew he was sick, his
(22:50):
young staff person called my office and said, Ray wants
to talk to President Clinton. Can you do it? And
I said sure, anytime, you know. So he called me,
and I knew he was sick, and it was pretty
well public by then. He didn't talk about any of that.
He had no interest in talking to He said, I'm
just calling a few of my friends. Feoful, I want
(23:14):
to talk to you know, one more time and we
shot the breeze for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
What did that feel like? If even you going to
your younger self and realized that Ray Charles called you
like and he wanted to call you before some things happened.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Yeah, and he knew he was going to die. Yeah,
but he didn't want to talk about that. He wanted
to just talk about life with people that he had
And I forget I think there were twelve or fifteen
people he just called that he wanted to talk to.
And I always thought he was something special.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
What was the moment did you think the music community
he talked about being friends with Quincy Jones and Ray Charles,
and I'm curious when they learned that you were beyond
a passer by? Was it like the Sax moment on
our senior? Did everybody realize like he is not just
a fan, He's a part of his community.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
Well, I got a little of that on Johnny Carson,
you know with it, Johnny Carson was I bombed at
my speech at the Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty eight,
and we don't have time for me to explain what
I bombed?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And so Carson hen hence Ducaucus.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
A woman actually is very interesting the people. This shows
you the difference in commentary. People that heard the speech
on the radio were ninety percent positive about it because
it was not interrupted. I got hundreds and hundreds of
letters from people who are in the radio. But anyway,
a woman named Amy Baker, who just passed away a
(24:48):
couple of years ago, a wonderful woman was working for
Carson and she called a friend of mine in California
and said, I think Clinton should come on the show.
He said, I think Johnny would like him, and he
said he'll let me take a ribbon. They talked, and
I said, and he never lets politicians come on the
show anymore, so we need him to play something so
(25:10):
we can use it as an excuse. I think we
played Billy Holidays, God Bless the Child, and maybe Heartbreak Hotel.
We played something, but I played anyway really, and then
Carson takes out an hour glass and you know what
those like three minutes was. It turns it up and
the sad starts running out, and I said, well, I
(25:35):
want to thank you for giving me a chance to
come here and finish my speech. So we had a
great time. And then I did our Sinio.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Okay, so we didn't know about Carson's.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I was like, this happened.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
Yes, then, uh so our sineo. You know knew I could.
It was halfway to be halfway decent. If I played
and I wasn't playing really much. Then I think we
did my funny Valentine and Summertime. I think that's what
we played.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You did Elvis song. I think you did Harbrey go
tell that part. I do remember on the commercial break.
Speaker 8 (26:12):
Well, Elvis was my secret service code name.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Okay, oh wow, that's when I.
Speaker 8 (26:17):
Was running for president. I literally could sing the Jordanaires
background to every single Elvis Presley song. I remembered long
sections of dialogue from Love Me Tender and you know
all that stuff. I liked him, and if you saw
Baz Lrman's film about him, we did one thing. The
(26:38):
film finally showed once why Presley was so close to
the black community and why he deliberately sang in the
Ghetto and some other songs. He didn't have much politics,
but he felt pretty strongly about civil rights because he'd
grown up on the edge of the black neighborhoods in Tupelo,
and and he had you know, the voice of a generation.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Can't wait for you to see the Little Richard documentary
where he he Lord Richard says Elvis actually told him
behind the scenes that you are basically the reason that
I am here, and no. Richard was like, well he's.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
In all out right.
Speaker 8 (27:15):
Well he was great, Little Richard.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I I was curious to know about the Arsenio performance
because this was in the nineties, so it's pre Twitter,
pre you know, going viral, so to speak. So how
did your team know, like after that performance, what were
the markers then.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Of like, yo, we killed that, Like how did you
see the impact of it on your campaign?
Speaker 8 (27:36):
A lot of it was like primp media commentary and
people are calling him, calling to all your headquarters. You know.
We used to send out our idea of rapid response
because we had a system. We had ten thousand people
throughout the country that we sent fax machine factions to
(27:59):
every day. We sent them facts as they says, here's
what we need to push today, and they would call
their local newspapers, they would call their local radio stations
and try to get the message out, or they would
write a letter to their local newspapers. I mean, it
seems so It seems like creaky today.
Speaker 7 (28:20):
That that wasn't so far away.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
We we were, you know, we did the best we could,
and you know, I think there were some good things
about the eighties and the nineties. It's still most towns
had their own newspapers, and they were pretty much on
the level. You know, they could be in real right
wing towns or real liberals towns, but they were newspapers
pretty well on the level. And they would give you
(28:48):
access if you showed up, and they would say what
you said and then and if they dumped on you,
they would do it on the editorial page. They wouldn't
twist the news story. It was very different than that.
Almost every town of any size had their own locally
owned radio station. It meant a huge difference. I mean,
(29:10):
I might not be here if it weren't for that.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All right, I got a question, and you know, I
was trying to figure out again with twenty four hour
less than twenty four hour warning, you don't know, like
what angle we're going to go in. And this brings
me back to if you remember, on the internet, they
started this trending question like would you rather have half
a million dollars or a dinner with jay Z. What
(29:41):
would you choose? And no, But the thing is is,
like you know, it's either would you rather get wisdom
on how to.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Run the game and create your own.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Game or just whatever? Just give me the money money, okay,
but the timeout, but I got but my question, aazy
would tell you to take the money. No, But you know,
since we have you here, and I feel like at
least for the five of us, and by the five
of us, also mean like the community that listens to
(30:14):
this particular podcast, All of us, I feel are either
in our pivot moment in our lives or in our career,
like all of us do something notable here, like he
was part of the Hamilton team, and you know, he's
been a long time engineer, She's been radio hosts, he's
been like a hero to many in the hip hop community.
(30:35):
And now we're kind of at this place in our
lives where we're sort of flirting with leadership roles. And
you know, I would like to ask you, as a
person who sort of volunteered for this life, to be
a leader in all those things because it comes with
a lot from what from the outside looking in or
I don't know, if I'm inside thinking I'm outside looking in.
(30:58):
It seems like one a thinkless job to be a leader.
And I'm not just talking about president. Let's take it down.
Why would you ever want to subject yourself to having
to always think, quick on your feet, always having the answer,
having to whatever the metaphorical term, reach across the aisle,
(31:21):
to speak to someone, to nuanced relationship, to do a
long dinner just for that one person, and you got
to do it like one hundred times. I guess I'm
basically asking is like all of us are right now
sort of at the bottom, looking at whatever our mount
Fiji or whatever the mountain is that we see. Why
should we want to be a leader, Like, what is
(31:45):
the what's the motivation?
Speaker 8 (31:48):
Most of life is a social experiment and a social experience.
So if you feel strongly about something and you want
to impact your chain, answers are much better if you
can lead a pack that agrees with you. And I
think that's really important that all these questions no one
(32:10):
can answer but the person affected. But I think it
starts with how you keep score. I mean, we all
keep score, whether we admit or not, we keep score
on ourselves. I wish I were a little taller. I
wish I little say, if I'd had Lebron's body, I'd
have gone a different line of work. That kind of stuff.
You know, we do that. So if you keep score
(32:36):
in a way that is at all other directed, then
if you get a chance to lead, you have to
do it and people won't resent you if they see
that it's other directed. I mean to me, I decided
when I got into this, I said, why are you
doing this? And I realized I had the faut some
(32:58):
way of keeping score. So I keep score as follows.
Are people better off when you quit than when you started?
The children have a broader future? And are things coming
together instead of falling apart? And if you can answer
yes to all three of those questions, I think your
life's a runaway success. Even if you have heartbreak, even
(33:21):
if you fail, even if you make colossal mistakes, and
if you make enough decisions and you live long enough,
you will make mistakes. I think that's it. But if
you if you keep scoring any way that is other director.
You want to increase people's love for music. You want
to increase people's understanding of the social impact of music.
(33:44):
You want to get people who never thought about how
America got started to see it through as they can
feel and you do, Hamilton, you know you did. Whatever
it is. There's a price.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
You should be president, so bad news. Guys care about
other people and not just not just ourselves.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Hang on a second. We got to let this go.
I knew was coming.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
I knew I was coming to Team music when I
say something brilliant.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Go ahead, you didn't mean an interrupt mist President. We
finished with your thought.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, as of this taping, you know,
we lost, Yeah, one of the most crucial leaders of
someone that I looked up to because the role that
Harry Belafonte played and social change, right, you know, because
I don't want to have to like what I'm previously.
(34:40):
What I'm known for now is just like hey, a hustler.
I'll do this job and that job and this project
and that project. But you know, I'm wondering, like at sixty,
at seventy, like what is my life going to be?
And right now I'm thinking like, okay, I want to
get into philanthropy. So I'm kind of like working my
behind off now now so that I can be in
(35:03):
the position to be that person when I get to
my sixties. And also I'm also trying to get out
the place where like I'm writing my future down, like okay,
ten years from now, I'm gonna do that. I'm now
learning a lesson where I wake up every day and
just like this, like this was definitely not on my
Bengo cart list, like at all, this conversation, but things
(35:23):
like this have been happening to me almost consistently for
the last two years, where you know, I'm such a
meticulous planner and this is what I'm doing. This is
how my future is going to be, and then universe
like kicks over and this, no, this is what you're
actually going to do. So you know, as far as
Harry Belafonte's concerned, that's kind of how I thought. Okay,
(35:46):
that might be the path I go, where I plant
ideas in people and then they implement these things and
change happens, be it we Are the world, or the
civil rights movement or even Beach Street, right, even Beach Street.
But I don't know. I just you said keeping score,
and for me, keeping score means that there are two sides,
(36:07):
and you have to be a coach to do that.
And the way that politics is now it's enough to
give me pause and just be like, I don't know,
let me just cut a check and hide in the woods,
you know, Like I've never been the hide in the
woods person, but I brought a farm three years ago,
(36:29):
thinking like I need a place in the woods to
hide in case the worst case scenario happens. So me, personally,
I'm just on the prespice on the line of like,
do I have to be that person? Do I have
to be the heir of Bellafante that's no longer here?
Or do I just hide behind somebody here? You do it?
Like what would you say?
Speaker 8 (36:50):
Because I would say, do you need to do a
little bit of both? Let me explain what I mean
by that. Harry Belafani work his way into what you
might call direct action where he's marching with doctor King.
But I was thinking that I was telling on Hell
the way drownd here today. I remember one of his
(37:10):
earliest movies when he was still a Calypso king, and
he was a beautiful man. God knows he was beautiful,
and so it's sort of a proto colonial movie. I'm
embarrassed I can't remember the name of it. But he's
a guy in the Caribbean. He's interested in what's going
on in this country, and this white lady sort of
(37:34):
falls in love with him. And when they did this movie,
it was a pretty brave thing to do to deal
with all that. There wasn't many movies dealing with all that.
So he made his statements in the movie and it was,
as a matter of fact, a good movie. And he
did a good thing. And then he used what he
had earned to start marching and getting involved with these
(37:58):
other things and doing it. I want to say something
almost contradicts what I told you earlier. I do think
you have to know how you're going to keep score,
and then you lay out a plan. But people ask
me all the time about how did I survive these
tough campaigns or what do you do when you're president?
And I remember when Hillary ran for the Senate from
(38:20):
New York, nobody asked her or her opponent, what are
you going to do when they bring down the World
Trade Center? So life is always happening to you. So basically,
you have to think about what you just said. And
I think it's a good thing you bought a.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Farm, by the way, But oh, I'm right next to you.
Trust me.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
But let's just take a politician, say vote for me
from mayor and I will do one, two, three. Okay.
Then you get in and George Floyd gets killed on
your streets or you're way up north. But for the
first time ever, a tornado takes out half your town
(39:00):
because of climate change, it's moving to Coronados North. Okay.
So you say, how should I think about this? Well,
first of all, you have to be heartless not to
deal with what's happening that you didn't plan for. But
if you don't also do what you said you would
do when you ran, the people that were your most
ardent supporters may feel let them and you may feel
(39:23):
let them. So life is a constant struggle to do
what you said you do and what you plan to
do deal with the incoming fire that you never expected.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Let me ask you a question real quick before you go.
We're going to probably be planning this interview back around June,
which is Black Music Month. I wanted to mention this
because although President Carter was the first one to invite,
of course, the Black Music Coalition to come to the
White House, you, my friend, were the one who signed
the order and invited Jimmy jam Terry Lewis, Deana Williams,
(39:59):
the Isley bro this to come to the White House
and make it official. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 8 (40:03):
Yeah? I remember that. First I wanted to do it,
and secondly it was another excuse to get people to
come see me, he thought. I mean, I was a
huge Brothers friend and I love this whole heart of mine.
I get it out every now and then just play
it again. There are all these songs you have, songs
you replay from your life, don't you. I think, Nina Simons,
(40:28):
I wish I knew how it would feel to be three.
It's the best recording of that song, and it's the
best little known song of the civil rights era. And
when I get really down, I just put it on
and play it. But anyway, that's what I wanted to
say about it. I didn't. I want to make the
point I was trying to make before. How whatever anybody's
(40:50):
listening to us, you worry about how much money is
it and what am I going to do? People need
to worry more about how am I going to do it?
If you're going to keep score in terms of other
people's lives and your impact on it, you have to
worry as much about how you're going to do it.
That's what you're gonna do, and how much money you
have or don't.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Beautiful, what's the stuff you listen to when you need
to get up?
Speaker 8 (41:13):
Oh? For once in my life, it's like Stevie Wonders
in my life.
Speaker 6 (41:18):
One last jazz question from me with regards to the
saxophone Oliver and Nelson. Are you an Oliver Nelson fan?
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (41:26):
So there's an albumin Impulse called a tribute to John
Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was just wondering if you've ever had
that one?
Speaker 7 (41:33):
No, check it out that.
Speaker 6 (41:36):
Yeah, it's class.
Speaker 8 (41:37):
I got a bunch of those albums.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, Oliver Nelson, Pharaoh Sanders. Are you a fan of
his as well?
Speaker 8 (41:44):
Oh? Yeah, you know he had Arkansas connections. Yeah, when
I talk to his family when he died.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You're reminding me that I'm doing my first chow in
Arkansas in four days. You are ever, Yeah, but the
roots have never went to you Arkansas. I think we're
going a little rock. Yeah, there's a festival down there,
so it'll be interesting to see you.
Speaker 8 (42:07):
You'll like it, They'll be that's a good town.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
I'm going to see it. So this, if you want
to go to.
Speaker 8 (42:13):
My library, let me know. I'll set it up right there.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I might do it, Yes, no doubt, I will absolutely
do that.
Speaker 8 (42:20):
And there's an uh we just opened the new Arkansas
Art Gallery, which is old and it's beautiful really and
a brilliant woman architect named Jenny Gang from Chicago did it.
It is a fabulous place.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I shall be going there.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
How big is that vinyl collection? You didn't tell us?
Speaker 8 (42:38):
Like?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
How many records you gotten? Where you keep those things?
Speaker 8 (42:41):
Oh? I keep them in home with my in New York.
I've got probably I've got over one hundred of these
in New York. But I also have that many in Arkansas.
There's an apartment upstairs in the library, and I've got
them there. Okay, so I still play.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Them there you go, Well, sir, yeah, this could actually
go in for twelve hours and we wouldn't care. But
your people were like, nah, you got to wrap it
up now. So on behalf of Fontigelo and Laya and
Sugar Steve and unpaid Bill. Thank you very much, President
Clinton for gracing our show.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Yes, oh you didn't get to President, You didn't get
to tell about your summer or Soul Dan We're supposed to.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Talk about next time?
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Okay, Part two, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, kids,
you ready like you?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You ready like you, Everything's roll, Let's go, we jump,
let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Here we go.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Suprema Sun Sun Suprema roll Calm Suprema Sun Sun Supremo.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Roll call, Suprema.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Sun Sun Supremo, Role Calm, Suprema Son Son Suprema Roll Call.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
My name is Questlove, Yeah, and you are you Yeah?
And that's Team Supreme.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And he's forty two.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Supreme So Suprema roll Calm, Suprema su Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
My name is Fante Yeah, and I'm gonna keep it
roll yeah with the realist President.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, out of archists.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Suprema son Son Suprema roll call, Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Role Call.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
My name is Sugar, Yeah, first president I ever met.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh you just reminded me.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (01:15):
I haven't filed my taxes.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yet, Suprema So Supremo. Roll call, Suprema So Suprema roll.
Speaker 7 (01:24):
Call paid Bill.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, and I got to thinking, yeah about my second
favorite bill. Yeah, President Clinton Supremata Supreme Suprema roll.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
It's my ear. Yeah, and it's a special day. Yeah,
our first press. Yeah, Bill Clinton all Day, roll.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Call Supremo, So Son Supremo, roll call, Supremo Son Son.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Supremo roll call.
Speaker 8 (01:57):
My name is Bill. Yeah, Yeah, I know the drill. Yeah,
I'm glad to be here. Yeah, calls music is there?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Take it up.
Speaker 8 (02:08):
Sun Sun Subpreme roll call Subpremo.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sun Sun Subprema roll Calm Subprema, Son Sun Subpremo, roll
call Subprema Son Sun Subprema roll call.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, Congratulations, we have our first Here we go.
I will say, it's it's a point. We just do
a Griselda right, exactly. It's amazing how the world works sometimes. Uh,
(02:47):
for no particular reason. You know, we we've been away
from each other for three years and decided, hey, it
might be cool for us to get back together and
do some stuff in person. And then life throws you
a curveball. And I I will say, probably no less
than twenty four hours ago, we got a call straight up.
And I'll be honest with you, because I was preparing
(03:07):
for another guest, and right before I went to sleep
last night, I read my itinery I'm like, wait a minute,
that's tomorrow. I thought that was like in the future,
because when you threw it at me, I was like, ah,
this will never happen.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
So like no, we all went.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Like what February thirtieth of yeah, nineteen seventy six, Like
that's going to happen. I will be saying, yeah, this
is happening. And our guest today is the very first
time that you're nervous. Yeah, yeah, this is the very
(03:43):
first time I stepped in the voter booth to exerciseise
ye write.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Our president voted for your age time.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I wasn't Oh the second time. Wait, how I don't
know what your age is. On papill I am eighty
six years old, Okay, I mean sometimes you seem younger
than me. Then when you have a beard.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
It looks like you're accountant, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So I don't know how old you are.
Speaker 7 (04:07):
But you know my.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
First vote was for ducacis believe it or not, that's
how old you are.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's how old you are. Come up anyway, Live in
CDM studios is where we are, and we are very
honored to have music lover musician. Uh and incidentally, are
the forty second president of these United States, William Jefferson
Clinton one A quest of.
Speaker 7 (04:37):
What is happening?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So how are you today?
Speaker 8 (04:39):
I'm good, I'm better now. This is I didn't find
out about this much before you.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
You were like an hour before. Oh, let's let's hit
down just a casual question, like what what did you
do this morning? Like what's your morning routine like as
of lately?
Speaker 8 (04:53):
Well lately, I get up in the morning and I
read the papers. I'm old five, I'll read the papers.
Get my phone and I read the papers I didn't read.
I read my local West Sister County paper and the
New York Times and paper. Then I read the Washington
Post online, and then I look and see what other
(05:14):
articles there are, and then I work puzzles for a
while because it's good for you. Like I do that
word puzzle in New York Times every day.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Are you a wordle person or a New York Times
crossword person or.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
I don't do that. I only do the cross word
on Sunday. But I do wordle, and I do the
wordle nice, and I do the spelling Bee, the spelling
Bee every day.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I would like to think that I have an expansive vocabulary,
but you know, it's so frustrating. I give up after
like the seventh word unpaid bill. You strike me as
a person that can at least get to fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I can I go in on the the this one. Yeah,
I can't stop. It's just like you can.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
It's pretty hard to do.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It was hard today. There was a lot of there was.
Every time there's an X, what, it's like, what the
hell's going to do? What's a vow for today?
Speaker 7 (06:01):
Well, there's a bunch of vwel so it's.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
A what's in the middle? Oh a, oh, well wait,
and you'll say that's hard.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
It was like I'm gonna no one's gonna listen.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
It's like oxidation annotation notation there too.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, during the pandemic, you'll be shocked at you know,
what you do for entertainment, especially because I was on
a farm with new cable. So that's when I started
my rabbit holing inside of crosswords and that sort of thing.
So you're a word o person.
Speaker 8 (06:28):
Too, Yeah, I started that later. I did that the
spelling Bee for a long time and now normally around
dinner time, he'lly and I'll get back together and between
the two of us we can get them all what
So we have a conspiracy for spelling baby. We didn't
do it yesterday, and I didn't get them all yesterday either.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So you like to do it at nighttime, around dinner
or first thing in the I'm the first thing in
the morning person.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
I like to do it first thing in the morning,
and then whichever ones I don't have, I'll just put
it away and think about it and start working. Because
I do. I call people in the morning when I'm
fresh and thoughtful, and then I'm trying to finish two
books I've been working on and it's been very frustrating,
so I do that in the middle of the day.
(07:15):
I take time off and take away. I try to
take a walk every day.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
My day is determined on if I'm able to solve wordle.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
One thing it frustrates me. The other day I got
three of the five letters in order off the first work,
which I put in a rose. And I got three
of the first and I got R O and then E,
and I literally went through five permutations before I got
to write one. I was going nothing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You wanted to throw your phone right it was broke.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
I think was a wordle And I went through all
you know wrote I don't know any other words. That's
what makes you feel you don't know what he's dumb, unlucky,
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It has a way of determining how good or rotten
your day is going to be. So I try to
do it now in the afternoon.
Speaker 8 (08:06):
So it can't spoil your morning.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, you know. See, you walked in with two albums
and being as though we're jazz fanatics here at Quest
of Supreme, where I'm curious to see what you brought
to the table. Why did you choose?
Speaker 8 (08:23):
This is an old Sunny Rollins album? You can see
I had to type it up. I see, I had
it forever and it's the first one he did on
Brazilian music. I once told Rollins that I love the
album he did in Harlem in the late nineties. He
(08:45):
said it wasn't worth of them, and I said, what
was the matter with it? He said, I didn't learn anything.
I didn't do anything new. There. He is, you know,
at his age, and he's just still doing things new.
So this is great.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
What's the name of that album?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
President's Sunny Rowlings brings.
Speaker 7 (09:02):
The jazz new rhythm from South America.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Oh okay, do you often get disappointed when you meet
notable people that have done things amazing that you think
are amazing, and then they're just dismissive of it. Like
that often happens here at the show where you know,
I sing you did, and they'll just be like, man, whatever.
Speaker 8 (09:21):
One of the things that I really loved when I
was president is nearly anybody, I'll come play for you
if you ask me. And one day I looked up.
I was sitting at my desk and I looked up,
and then we had the door open to the outside.
Dave Brewbeck was standing there and he was, you know,
(09:41):
getting you know, some award. Not the Kennedy Center war. Oh,
he got the National Medal of Arts that you're So
I went out and shook hands with him, and I
told him how much I liked him, And I said,
you know, when I was fifteen years old, you've played
about seventy miles from home. So I went to your
concert in Arkansas because he was friends with the guy
(10:05):
who was a great music teacher there, jazz fanatic. He
looked at me and kind of skeptically said, he said,
besides take five, what's your.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
People?
Speaker 8 (10:16):
What's your favorite rubeks on? I thought always giving me.
I said blue Rondo. He said nobody knows that. I said,
it's a great song. He said, hum the bridge.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh, he's one of those people was so.
Speaker 8 (10:31):
I hummed the Bridge for it, and three days later
he sent me a great autograph copy of the chart
and that still hangs in my music room today. Wow.
Just because I knew the Bridge from BLUEO.
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Wow, that's terrifying. Yo, that's the one you know, don't want?
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You know?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
What does that like? Does that a lot of where
I'll just take the compliment and be like, you know,
because they'll say something skill like, yo, man, I have
bootleg and then to reach the person that actually wants
evidence that you really believe, And then I'm like, what
if it winds up being a pie in the face
moment and then you can't say, then how's the conversation going.
(11:12):
I'm glad you knew his history, right.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
Me too.
Speaker 6 (11:16):
What other records did you bring in there?
Speaker 8 (11:19):
I got Dizzy Gillespie's New Way, which also has a
couple of resilient songs on it, including the Morning of
the Carnival from Black Corfea, which is one of my
favorite songs. I think it's one of the most beautiful
songs that were written.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
A love Brazilian music. Mister President was like, my favorite.
Oh I'm like this, No, no, I said, the music,
not that.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
This is a record of Jimmy Smith. I think he
is the greatest sas organist who ever lived. And he
used to play at a place called the Cellar Door
in Washington when I was in college, so I would
go and listen to him, and the first time he
started playing, I thought that organ and was going to
walk out of this room all by itself. Oh, he
(12:04):
was unbelievable. What year was this, sixty four, sixty five,
something like that. And this is my favorite jazz samba record.
This is the first record done by Stan Gatz and
Charlie Birds out of Brazil.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
So when did you fall in love with Brazilian jazz?
Speaker 8 (12:26):
I was interested in jazz, and I started listening to
bigger jazz bands when I was six or seven years old,
and my folks had a record player and they'd go
away and I'd just get these records, just record after
record and sit there on the floor and listen to them.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
So was your parents collection?
Speaker 8 (12:43):
Yeah? And then I started ordering Downbeat magazine when I
was in grade school, and because they asked me, I
started out on clarinet, and they asked me to shift
to saxophone because the school needed a saxophone in the band.
And I fell in love with and I started reading Downbeat,
and I read it all through high school, and when
(13:05):
I could, i'd supplement the record collection.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
You know, did you have aspirations of being a professional
musician or did you just love it?
Speaker 8 (13:12):
Absolutely? Yeah, I would. I went to summer camp at
the university and they had some good teachers, and I
would sometimes play twelve hours a day. I inflayed, my
guns were practically bleeding, and I loved it. But when
I was sixteen, I looked in the mirror one day
and I said, will you ever be as good as culturing?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
How are you the president? Talking yourself out of your
own dream? That young?
Speaker 8 (13:44):
Oh? I didn't talk to myself. I was conflicted. I
wanted to do three things in my life. I wanted
to be a doctor that helped people that didn't have
access to healthcare. I didn't want to, you know, be
a rich doctor. I wanted to get out there. I
wanted to be Paul Farmer. When I grew up, I
wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a musician,
(14:07):
and I wanted to be in politics because I could
see when I was a boy how much conflict there
still was in America. So I remember like it was yesterday.
I was sixteen looking in a mirror, just begun to
shave felt big. And the reason I asked this question is,
you couldn't make a living as a jazz musician in
(14:31):
the sixties unless you did the clubs. You know, nobody
had these massive record contracts. You didn't a jazz musicians
didn't feel you know what like Kenny g later made
a lot of money, you know, going around. You couldn't
make a living unless you did the clubs. And so
your chances of becoming addicted the drugs were roughly three
(14:54):
times your chances of having a successful family and raising
kids that were healthy. I mean, you had to. It
was a big risk. As Coltrane and lots of others
found out, he was a genius.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Have you ever got to witness him in person?
Speaker 8 (15:08):
No, I never heard Cold Training person. I do have
at home an autographed album that a friend of mine
found for me, where his face is like has gone
into running paint, fascinating looking album. I never heard him.
I never heard gets. I did herb Alfred, he gets
(15:30):
his last saxophone and he had it in a safe.
So he sent me a note when I got elected,
and he said, if you come out here, I'll let
you play it. But I never got to do it.
But anyway, I just thought that it wasn't worth the risk.
And I did love it, but I had a sort
(15:54):
of troubled home growing up, and I knew i'd be
disappointed in my life if I didn't, you know, have
a child and do a halfway decent.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Job and a musicians not the salary that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
How old were you when you left Arkansas? Like how
long did you live there before you went to college?
Speaker 8 (16:14):
From my birth, I was born in a little town
of Arkansas, and we moved to a bigger town when
I was six after the first grade, and I stayed
there until I graduated from high school and I went
to college in Washington for four years. Then I lived
in England for two years, which was a.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Great part of what part of England did you live?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
I was in school in Oxford, so I got a
scholarship to go to school there, and that was great
because it was in the middle of all the Vietnam
War to do, you know? And I kept waiting to
be drafted every month and I was called once, but
the law allowed you to finish the year you were
in if you were in school. And then the lottery
(16:59):
came in. I got a high number.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Did you go to the club scene a lot in
London when you were living there and going? No?
Speaker 8 (17:04):
But I went to. Like we were talking about concerts,
I tried to find whatever music I could, and I
remember the most memorable one for me was when Mahaja
Jackson played the Albert Hall, which is this great old
Victorian venue, and you know, the country England was deeply divided,
(17:26):
America was deeply divided. Everybody was upset, kids were cynical,
and all of a sudden, I go to the but
I was determined to hear Mohata Jackson. So I go
with a friend who knew nothing about her music. I said,
you're going to love this. You thank me for the
rest of your life. So were we got a seat,
you know, pretty far back. But I looked around and
(17:49):
most of the people there were young people, and she
started singing and by about the third song, half the
audience was crying. I mean, she was so enormously powerful.
She just was, She just radiated her.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Still gospel music, right, you think to be a bunch
of kids.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
Then at the end of the performance, they stormed the
stage and they were like seven or eight deep right
on the stage, screaming like they were groupies at a
rock concert and begging her to keep singing and begging her.
And she sang another song or two and then finally
had to leave. You know, but and she was just
her standing alone on the stage. You know, the way
she did it was amazing. It was one of the
(18:32):
most amazing concerts I ever saw. Just she was something.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Well I wanted to know, like what your music experience
was in Arkansas, like because you seem pretty open minded
to just art and all that stuff, Like how does
one do that from Yeah.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
Well it was we weren't all the same, you know,
it's not like it even today. It's more well to
the right of where it was in the nineteen seventies.
Most Southern states are in the small towns in rural
areas because of what's happened to the information ecosystem and
a lot of other things. But I remember when I
(19:17):
went to the BREWBYX concert, I was telling you about that.
He was friends with the band director down there who
had worked with Stan Kenton, and when they did all
that groundbreaking musical work. You know, in the fifties, there
were always chances to do that. I've Ray Charles once
when he was kind of on the slow circuit in
(19:38):
a little venue in western Arkansas. When I was in college,
I heard Ray Charles sing where Marion Anderton did in
Constitution Hall. She wanted to sing in Constitution Hall. You
remember that Daughters of American Revolution drove her out. So
(19:58):
Harold Ikey's the interior secretary for Roosevelt, whose son worked
for me in the White House. Amazing. He gave her
the Lincoln Memorial.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
The famous.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
When Ray Charles came in nineteen sixty seven, he sang
in Constitution Hall. And I call this woman that I
had just met, and on a lark, I asked if
she wanted to go to this concert. She was about
six feet tall, and we got we can. By the
time I got the tickets, we had to sit way
(20:34):
up in the back on the second floor, and we
were only There were fewer than ten white people there. Yes,
it was unbelievable, though I never forget he played, you know,
his repertoire, and he saved Georgia till near the last,
and he plays the introduction on the piano and didn't
(20:56):
do anything. He holds it in the crowds and then
finally he just reaches up to microphone he said Georgia
like that, and the crowd went nuts, just nuts, and
it was And I was so excited at that Ray
Charles concert. I remember it was June the twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty seven. I so remember where it was that
(21:19):
I stayed up till three o'clock in the morning. I
couldn't go to sleep, and I went out and raided
three in three miles so I could sleep a little.
And I saved that ticket stub for I don't know
ten fifteen years. I kept it in my billfa wow.
And I was so grateful that I finally got to
meet him, you know, when I was president, and we
(21:39):
became friends. And Quincy Jones was helpful to me because
he was a friend of mine. And you know, he
and Charles knew each other in Seattle when Quincy was
fourteen and Charles was seventeen, and Ray Charles got himself
all the way from Central Florida where he was a
boy as a blind man, because he was not blind
(22:03):
in his early years, but he was blind, and he
took a bus. He said he wanted to get as
far away from central Florida as he could without having
to leave the country, so he went to Seattle, and
Quincy said, you know, I decided I could make it music.
I mean, here's this blond guy who's seventeen and he's
(22:26):
got his own apartment. He's got three suits in the closet,
and he's got a girlfriend. And that was a great story,
and I genuinely came to not only admire but have
an enormous affection for Ray Charleson a couple of weeks
before he died, and this is long after I left
the White House and I knew he was sick, his
(22:50):
young staff person called my office and said, Ray wants
to talk to President Clinton. Can you do it? And
I said sure, anytime, you know. So he called me,
and I knew he was sick, and it was pretty
well public by then. He didn't talk about any of that.
He had no interest in talking to He said, I'm
just calling a few of my friends. Feoful, I want
(23:14):
to talk to you know, one more time and we
shot the breeze for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
What did that feel like? If even you going to
your younger self and realized that Ray Charles called you
like and he wanted to call you before some things happened.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Yeah, and he knew he was going to die. Yeah,
but he didn't want to talk about that. He wanted
to just talk about life with people that he had
And I forget I think there were twelve or fifteen
people he just called that he wanted to talk to.
And I always thought he was something special.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
What was the moment did you think the music community
he talked about being friends with Quincy Jones and Ray Charles,
and I'm curious when they learned that you were beyond
a passer by? Was it like the Sax moment on
our senior? Did everybody realize like he is not just
a fan, He's a part of his community.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
Well, I got a little of that on Johnny Carson,
you know with it, Johnny Carson was I bombed at
my speech at the Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty eight,
and we don't have time for me to explain what
I bombed?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And so Carson hen hence Ducaucus.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
A woman actually is very interesting the people. This shows
you the difference in commentary. People that heard the speech
on the radio were ninety percent positive about it because
it was not interrupted. I got hundreds and hundreds of
letters from people who are in the radio. But anyway,
a woman named Amy Baker, who just passed away a
(24:48):
couple of years ago, a wonderful woman was working for
Carson and she called a friend of mine in California
and said, I think Clinton should come on the show.
He said, I think Johnny would like him, and he
said he'll let me take a ribbon. They talked, and
I said, and he never lets politicians come on the
show anymore, so we need him to play something so
(25:10):
we can use it as an excuse. I think we
played Billy Holidays, God Bless the Child, and maybe Heartbreak Hotel.
We played something, but I played anyway really, and then
Carson takes out an hour glass and you know what
those like three minutes was. It turns it up and
the sad starts running out, and I said, well, I
(25:35):
want to thank you for giving me a chance to
come here and finish my speech. So we had a
great time. And then I did our Sinio.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Okay, so we didn't know about Carson's.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I was like, this happened.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
Yes, then, uh so our sineo. You know knew I could.
It was halfway to be halfway decent. If I played
and I wasn't playing really much. Then I think we
did my funny Valentine and Summertime. I think that's what
we played.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You did Elvis song. I think you did Harbrey go
tell that part. I do remember on the commercial break.
Speaker 8 (26:12):
Well, Elvis was my secret service code name.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Okay, oh wow, that's when I.
Speaker 8 (26:17):
Was running for president. I literally could sing the Jordanaires
background to every single Elvis Presley song. I remembered long
sections of dialogue from Love Me Tender and you know
all that stuff. I liked him, and if you saw
Baz Lrman's film about him, we did one thing. The
(26:38):
film finally showed once why Presley was so close to
the black community and why he deliberately sang in the
Ghetto and some other songs. He didn't have much politics,
but he felt pretty strongly about civil rights because he'd
grown up on the edge of the black neighborhoods in Tupelo,
and and he had you know, the voice of a generation.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Can't wait for you to see the Little Richard documentary
where he he Lord Richard says Elvis actually told him
behind the scenes that you are basically the reason that
I am here, and no. Richard was like, well he's.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
In all out right.
Speaker 8 (27:15):
Well he was great, Little Richard.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I I was curious to know about the Arsenio performance
because this was in the nineties, so it's pre Twitter,
pre you know, going viral, so to speak. So how
did your team know, like after that performance, what were
the markers then.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Of like, yo, we killed that, Like how did you
see the impact of it on your campaign?
Speaker 8 (27:36):
A lot of it was like primp media commentary and
people are calling him, calling to all your headquarters. You know.
We used to send out our idea of rapid response
because we had a system. We had ten thousand people
throughout the country that we sent fax machine factions to
(27:59):
every day. We sent them facts as they says, here's
what we need to push today, and they would call
their local newspapers, they would call their local radio stations
and try to get the message out, or they would
write a letter to their local newspapers. I mean, it
seems so It seems like creaky today.
Speaker 7 (28:20):
That that wasn't so far away.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
We we were, you know, we did the best we could,
and you know, I think there were some good things
about the eighties and the nineties. It's still most towns
had their own newspapers, and they were pretty much on
the level. You know, they could be in real right
wing towns or real liberals towns, but they were newspapers
pretty well on the level. And they would give you
(28:48):
access if you showed up, and they would say what
you said and then and if they dumped on you,
they would do it on the editorial page. They wouldn't
twist the news story. It was very different than that.
Almost every town of any size had their own locally
owned radio station. It meant a huge difference. I mean,
(29:10):
I might not be here if it weren't for that.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
All right, I got a question, and you know, I
was trying to figure out again with twenty four hour
less than twenty four hour warning, you don't know, like
what angle we're going to go in. And this brings
me back to if you remember, on the internet, they
started this trending question like would you rather have half
a million dollars or a dinner with jay Z. What
(29:41):
would you choose? And no, But the thing is is,
like you know, it's either would you rather get wisdom
on how to.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Run the game and create your own.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Game or just whatever? Just give me the money money, okay,
but the timeout, but I got but my question, aazy
would tell you to take the money. No, But you know,
since we have you here, and I feel like at
least for the five of us, and by the five
of us, also mean like the community that listens to
(30:14):
this particular podcast, All of us, I feel are either
in our pivot moment in our lives or in our career,
like all of us do something notable here, like he
was part of the Hamilton team, and you know, he's
been a long time engineer, She's been radio hosts, he's
been like a hero to many in the hip hop community.
(30:35):
And now we're kind of at this place in our
lives where we're sort of flirting with leadership roles. And
you know, I would like to ask you, as a
person who sort of volunteered for this life, to be
a leader in all those things because it comes with
a lot from what from the outside looking in or
I don't know, if I'm inside thinking I'm outside looking in.
(30:58):
It seems like one a thinkless job to be a leader.
And I'm not just talking about president. Let's take it down.
Why would you ever want to subject yourself to having
to always think, quick on your feet, always having the answer,
having to whatever the metaphorical term, reach across the aisle,
(31:21):
to speak to someone, to nuanced relationship, to do a
long dinner just for that one person, and you got
to do it like one hundred times. I guess I'm
basically asking is like all of us are right now
sort of at the bottom, looking at whatever our mount
Fiji or whatever the mountain is that we see. Why
should we want to be a leader, Like, what is
(31:45):
the what's the motivation?
Speaker 8 (31:48):
Most of life is a social experiment and a social experience.
So if you feel strongly about something and you want
to impact your chain, answers are much better if you
can lead a pack that agrees with you. And I
think that's really important that all these questions no one
(32:10):
can answer but the person affected. But I think it
starts with how you keep score. I mean, we all
keep score, whether we admit or not, we keep score
on ourselves. I wish I were a little taller. I
wish I little say, if I'd had Lebron's body, I'd
have gone a different line of work. That kind of stuff.
You know, we do that. So if you keep score
(32:36):
in a way that is at all other directed, then
if you get a chance to lead, you have to
do it and people won't resent you if they see
that it's other directed. I mean to me, I decided
when I got into this, I said, why are you
doing this? And I realized I had the faut some
(32:58):
way of keeping score. So I keep score as follows.
Are people better off when you quit than when you started?
The children have a broader future? And are things coming
together instead of falling apart? And if you can answer
yes to all three of those questions, I think your
life's a runaway success. Even if you have heartbreak, even
(33:21):
if you fail, even if you make colossal mistakes, and
if you make enough decisions and you live long enough,
you will make mistakes. I think that's it. But if
you if you keep scoring any way that is other director.
You want to increase people's love for music. You want
to increase people's understanding of the social impact of music.
(33:44):
You want to get people who never thought about how
America got started to see it through as they can
feel and you do, Hamilton, you know you did. Whatever
it is. There's a price.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
You should be president, so bad news. Guys care about
other people and not just not just ourselves.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Hang on a second. We got to let this go.
I knew was coming.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
I knew I was coming to Team music when I
say something brilliant.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Go ahead, you didn't mean an interrupt mist President. We
finished with your thought.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, as of this taping, you know,
we lost, Yeah, one of the most crucial leaders of
someone that I looked up to because the role that
Harry Belafonte played and social change, right, you know, because
I don't want to have to like what I'm previously.
(34:40):
What I'm known for now is just like hey, a hustler.
I'll do this job and that job and this project
and that project. But you know, I'm wondering, like at sixty,
at seventy, like what is my life going to be?
And right now I'm thinking like, okay, I want to
get into philanthropy. So I'm kind of like working my
behind off now now so that I can be in
(35:03):
the position to be that person when I get to
my sixties. And also I'm also trying to get out
the place where like I'm writing my future down, like okay,
ten years from now, I'm gonna do that. I'm now
learning a lesson where I wake up every day and
just like this, like this was definitely not on my
Bengo cart list, like at all, this conversation, but things
(35:23):
like this have been happening to me almost consistently for
the last two years, where you know, I'm such a
meticulous planner and this is what I'm doing. This is
how my future is going to be, and then universe
like kicks over and this, no, this is what you're
actually going to do. So you know, as far as
Harry Belafonte's concerned, that's kind of how I thought. Okay,
(35:46):
that might be the path I go, where I plant
ideas in people and then they implement these things and
change happens, be it we Are the world, or the
civil rights movement or even Beach Street, right, even Beach Street.
But I don't know. I just you said keeping score,
and for me, keeping score means that there are two sides,
(36:07):
and you have to be a coach to do that.
And the way that politics is now it's enough to
give me pause and just be like, I don't know,
let me just cut a check and hide in the woods,
you know, Like I've never been the hide in the
woods person, but I brought a farm three years ago,
(36:29):
thinking like I need a place in the woods to
hide in case the worst case scenario happens. So me, personally,
I'm just on the prespice on the line of like,
do I have to be that person? Do I have
to be the heir of Bellafante that's no longer here?
Or do I just hide behind somebody here? You do it?
Like what would you say?
Speaker 8 (36:50):
Because I would say, do you need to do a
little bit of both? Let me explain what I mean
by that. Harry Belafani work his way into what you
might call direct action where he's marching with doctor King.
But I was thinking that I was telling on Hell
the way drownd here today. I remember one of his
(37:10):
earliest movies when he was still a Calypso king, and
he was a beautiful man. God knows he was beautiful,
and so it's sort of a proto colonial movie. I'm
embarrassed I can't remember the name of it. But he's
a guy in the Caribbean. He's interested in what's going
on in this country, and this white lady sort of
(37:34):
falls in love with him. And when they did this movie,
it was a pretty brave thing to do to deal
with all that. There wasn't many movies dealing with all that.
So he made his statements in the movie and it was,
as a matter of fact, a good movie. And he
did a good thing. And then he used what he
had earned to start marching and getting involved with these
(37:58):
other things and doing it. I want to say something
almost contradicts what I told you earlier. I do think
you have to know how you're going to keep score,
and then you lay out a plan. But people ask
me all the time about how did I survive these
tough campaigns or what do you do when you're president?
And I remember when Hillary ran for the Senate from
(38:20):
New York, nobody asked her or her opponent, what are
you going to do when they bring down the World
Trade Center? So life is always happening to you. So basically,
you have to think about what you just said. And
I think it's a good thing you bought a.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Farm, by the way, But oh, I'm right next to you.
Trust me.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
But let's just take a politician, say vote for me
from mayor and I will do one, two, three. Okay.
Then you get in and George Floyd gets killed on
your streets or you're way up north. But for the
first time ever, a tornado takes out half your town
(39:00):
because of climate change, it's moving to Coronados North. Okay.
So you say, how should I think about this? Well,
first of all, you have to be heartless not to
deal with what's happening that you didn't plan for. But
if you don't also do what you said you would
do when you ran, the people that were your most
ardent supporters may feel let them and you may feel
(39:23):
let them. So life is a constant struggle to do
what you said you do and what you plan to
do deal with the incoming fire that you never expected.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Let me ask you a question real quick before you go.
We're going to probably be planning this interview back around June,
which is Black Music Month. I wanted to mention this
because although President Carter was the first one to invite,
of course, the Black Music Coalition to come to the
White House, you, my friend, were the one who signed
the order and invited Jimmy jam Terry Lewis, Deana Williams,
(39:59):
the Isley bro this to come to the White House
and make it official. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 8 (40:03):
Yeah? I remember that. First I wanted to do it,
and secondly it was another excuse to get people to
come see me, he thought. I mean, I was a
huge Brothers friend and I love this whole heart of mine.
I get it out every now and then just play
it again. There are all these songs you have, songs
you replay from your life, don't you. I think, Nina Simons,
(40:28):
I wish I knew how it would feel to be three.
It's the best recording of that song, and it's the
best little known song of the civil rights era. And
when I get really down, I just put it on
and play it. But anyway, that's what I wanted to
say about it. I didn't. I want to make the
point I was trying to make before. How whatever anybody's
(40:50):
listening to us, you worry about how much money is
it and what am I going to do? People need
to worry more about how am I going to do it?
If you're going to keep score in terms of other
people's lives and your impact on it, you have to
worry as much about how you're going to do it.
That's what you're gonna do, and how much money you
have or don't.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Beautiful, what's the stuff you listen to when you need
to get up?
Speaker 8 (41:13):
Oh? For once in my life, it's like Stevie Wonders
in my life.
Speaker 6 (41:18):
One last jazz question from me with regards to the
saxophone Oliver and Nelson. Are you an Oliver Nelson fan?
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (41:26):
So there's an albumin Impulse called a tribute to John
Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was just wondering if you've ever had
that one?
Speaker 7 (41:33):
No, check it out that.
Speaker 6 (41:36):
Yeah, it's class.
Speaker 8 (41:37):
I got a bunch of those albums.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, Oliver Nelson, Pharaoh Sanders. Are you a fan of
his as well?
Speaker 8 (41:44):
Oh? Yeah, you know he had Arkansas connections. Yeah, when
I talk to his family when he died.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You're reminding me that I'm doing my first chow in
Arkansas in four days. You are ever, Yeah, but the
roots have never went to you Arkansas. I think we're
going a little rock. Yeah, there's a festival down there,
so it'll be interesting to see you.
Speaker 8 (42:07):
You'll like it, They'll be that's a good town.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
I'm going to see it. So this, if you want
to go to.
Speaker 8 (42:13):
My library, let me know. I'll set it up right there.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I might do it, Yes, no doubt, I will absolutely
do that.
Speaker 8 (42:20):
And there's an uh we just opened the new Arkansas
Art Gallery, which is old and it's beautiful really and
a brilliant woman architect named Jenny Gang from Chicago did it.
It is a fabulous place.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I shall be going there.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
How big is that vinyl collection? You didn't tell us?
Speaker 8 (42:38):
Like?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
How many records you gotten? Where you keep those things?
Speaker 8 (42:41):
Oh? I keep them in home with my in New York.
I've got probably I've got over one hundred of these
in New York. But I also have that many in Arkansas.
There's an apartment upstairs in the library, and I've got
them there. Okay, so I still play.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Them there you go, Well, sir, yeah, this could actually
go in for twelve hours and we wouldn't care. But
your people were like, nah, you got to wrap it
up now. So on behalf of Fontigelo and Laya and
Sugar Steve and unpaid Bill. Thank you very much, President
Clinton for gracing our show.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Yes, oh you didn't get to President, You didn't get
to tell about your summer or Soul Dan We're supposed to.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Talk about next time?
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Okay, Part two, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Laiya St. Clair
Questlove
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