I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song. ↗
I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life. ↗
So one of the things that happened with integration in the South is they found that the black teachers were much more educated than the white teachers. ↗
The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American. ↗
Everybody was starting to grow long hair and wear pink suits and purple glasses and stuff and then, I suppose, some people thought we were crazy, but we weren't really crazy because we're all still here! ↗
I think of these things as obstacles rather than opportunities, because if they were opportunities it means I actually took the business of doing them seriously. To take myself too seriously is the gentle kiss of death. ↗
I came to join the Experience by going for an audition for Eric Burdon who was just forming the New Animals at that point, after the original Animals had broken up. ↗
It was rehearsing in the studio, at which point they were setting up the sound, and once we'd got the thing together they'd actually record it, without us knowing sometimes! ↗
