But life is tough and if you're creative, it's tougher.

Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

If you try to do that in pop music - to play only rare show tunes, for example - people don't come.

Once in a while, I try to sneak in something less known anyway.

I was very young at the time, and I mainly appreciated their vocal qualities, even though I was already living as they did - as black performers in a white world.