Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, kids, you ready like you?
You ready like you? Everything's ll let's go, we jump, let's do it, let's do it. Here we go.
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Roll call, Suprema.
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My name is Questlove, Yeah, and you are you Yeah? And that's Team Supreme.
Yeah.
And he's forty two.
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My name is Fante Yeah, and I'm gonna keep it roll yeah with the Realist President.
Yeah, out of Arkansas.
Suprema Son Suprema, roll call, Suprema Son Son Supremo.
Role Call.
My name is Sugar.
Yeah, first president I ever met.
Yeah.
Oh you just reminded me.
Yeah.
I haven't filed my taxes yet.
Suprema So Supremo. Roll call, Suprema So Suprema.
Roll call paid Bill.
Yeah, and I got to thinking, yeah about my second favorite bill.
Yeah, President Clinton.
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Supreme So Suprema roll.
It's my ear yeah, and it's a special day. Yeah, our first press. Yeah, Bill Clinton all Day.
Roll call Supremo, So Son Supremo, roll call, Supremo, Son Son.
Supremo, roll call.
My name is Bill. Yeah, Yeah, I know the drill. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, calls music is there? Take it up?
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Subprema roll call.
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, 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 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.
So like no, we all went like what.
February thirtieth of Yah, 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 first time I stepped in the voter booth to exerciseise.
Y rightsident voted for your age.
Time.
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.
It looks like you're accountant, right exactly.
So I don't know how old you are. But you know, my.
First vote was for ducacis believe it or not, that's how old you are.
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 question to.
What is happening?
So, how are you today?
I'm good, I'm better now. This is I didn't find out about this much before you.
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?
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 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.
Are you a wordle person or a New York Times crossword person or 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.
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.
I can I go in on the the this one. Yeah, I can't stop. It's just like you can.
It's pretty hard to do.
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?
Well, there's a bunch of vwel so it's a.
What's in the middle?
Oh a, oh, well wait, and you'll say that's hard. It was like I'm gonna no one's gonna listen. It's like oxidation annotation notation there too.
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.
Too, Yeah, I started that later. I did that the spelling bee for a long time and now normally around dinner time, He'll 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.
So you like to do it at nighttime, around dinner or first thing in the I'm the first thing in the morning person.
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. I take time off and take away. I try to take a walk every day.
My day is determined on if I'm able to solve wordle.
One thing that 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.
I wanted to throw your right.
It was broke, I think was the 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.
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.
So it can't spoil your morning.
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.
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 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 still doing things new. So this is great.
What's the name of that album, President, It's Sounny Rowlings brings.
The jazz new rhythm from South America.
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 say the thing he did, and they'll just be like, man, whatever.
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,
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 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 people? 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.
Oh, he's one of those people was so.
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.
Wow, that's terrifying.
Yo, that's the one you know, don't want?
You know?
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 botle 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?
I'm glad you knew his history, right.
Me too.
What other records did you bring in there?
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 a.
Love Brazilian music. Mister President was like, my favorite. Oh I'm like this, No, no, I said the music, not that.
This is a record of Jimmy Smith. I think he is the greatest sas organists 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 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.
So when did you fall in love with Brazilian jazz?
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.
So was your parents collection?
Yeah? And then I started ordering Downbeating 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 I could, i'd supplement the record collection.
You know, did you have aspirations of being a professional musician or did you just love it?
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?
How are you the president? Talking yourself out of your own dream? That young?
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, 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 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 to drugs were roughly three 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 Cole Traning and lots of others found out, he was a genius.
Have you ever got to witness him in person?
No, I never heard Cold Training in 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 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 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 job.
And a musicians not the talary that's going to happen.
How old were you when you left Arkansas? Like how long did you live there before you went to college?
From my birth, I was born in a little town of Arkansas, and then 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.
Great part of What part of England did you live?
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 came in. I got a high number.
Did you go to the club scene a lot in London when you were living there and going? No?
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, 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 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.
Still gospel music, right, you think to be a bunch of kids.
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 most amazing concerts I ever saw. Just she was something.
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.
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 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 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 Harold Ikey's the interior secretary for Roosevelt, whose son worked
for me in the White House. Amazing. He gave her the Lincoln Memorial, the famous When Ray Charles came in nineteen sixty seven, he sang in Constitutional 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 to talk to, you know, one more time, and we shot the breeze for like twenty minutes.
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.
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.
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.
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?
And so Carson hen hence Ducacus.
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 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 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 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.
Okay, so we didn't know about Carson's.
Yeah, I was like, this happened.
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.
You did Elvis song. I think you did Harbrey tell that part. I do remember on the commercial break.
Well, Elvis was my secret service code name.
Okay, oh wow, that's when.
I 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 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.
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.
In all out right.
Well he was great, Little Richard. I was.
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 of like, yo, we killed that, Like how did you see the impact of it on your campaign?
A lot of it was like primp media commentary and people are calling in, 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 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.
That that wasn't so far away.
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 built newspapers pretty well on the level. And they would give you 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, I might not be here if it weren't for that.
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 would you choose?
And no, But the thing is is, like you know, it's either would you rather get wisdom on how to.
Run the game and create your own.
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 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. 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. It seems like one a thankless 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, to speak to someone, to nuanced a 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 the what's the motivation?
Most of life is a social experiment and a social experience. So if you feel strongly about something and you want to impact your cha 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 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 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 to face some
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 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. 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.
You should be president, So bad news. Guys care about other people and not just not just ourselves.
Hang on a second. We got to let this go. I knew it was coming. I knew I was coming my team music when I say something brilliant go.
Ahead, you didn't mean an interrupt miss President. We finished with your thought?
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. 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 and you do it?
Like what would you say, 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 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 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
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 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.
Farm, by the way, But oh, I'm right next to you. Trust me.
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 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 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.
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, the Isley bro This to come to the White House and make it official. Can you talk about that?
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, 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 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.
Beautiful, what's the stuff you listen to when you need to get up?
Oh? For once in my life, it's like Stevie Wonders in my life.
One last jazz question from me with regards to the saxophone Oliver and Nelson. Are you an Oliver Nelson fan?
Yes?
So there's an albumin Impulse called a tribute to John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was just wondering if you've ever had that one?
No, check it out that.
Yeah, it's class.
I got a bunch of those albums.
Yeah, Oliver Nelson, Pharaoh Sanders. Were you a fan of his as well?
Oh? Yeah, you know he had Arkansas connections. Yeah, he want to talk to his family when he died.
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.
You'll like it. They'll be that's a good town.
I'm going to see it. So this, if you want to.
Go to my library, let me know. I'll set it up right there.
I might do it, Yes, no doubt, I will absolutely do that.
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.
I shall be going there.
How big is that vinyl collection? You didn't tell us?
Like?
How many records you gotten? Where you keep those things?
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.
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.
Yes, oh you didn't get to President you didn't get to tell about your summer or soul. Dan, We're supposed to.
Talk about next time. Okay, Part two, Thank you very much.
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