I attended the High School of Industrial Arts and studied with many great artists as painting is something that you never stop learning about. Actually, in high school there was a time that I was thinking about just concentrating on painting and I asked my music teacher, Mr. Sondberg, for advice and he encouraged me to stick with the music as well. So all my life I have been singing and painting.

To work is to feel alive.

More than anybody else I’d like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform.

I can't ask for more out of life, and the more I learn, the less I know.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name & I come out & sing. I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.

That song helped make me a world citizen. It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe. It changed my whole life.

I try to tell the story about the song with the believability that I've lived it myself and I understand what it's all about.