Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed.
I've been recording since 1993. It was a hobby for six of those years. In 1999, I decided to do it full time and take it seriously.
I've only been making records since 1991. When you look at the long-standing careers of people like Joni, it's not very long!
I always thought that I would have a recording career.
In 29 years, I had recorded over 2,200 songs. I was amazed.
Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.
This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
When I started my recording career, I hoped that someday the Grammy committee would notice something.
I should be, right now, a normal 17-year-old sitting in class in high school. Instead, I'm recording, and it's so exciting for me. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing right now.
I did my thing with Jive. I was a national recording artist, but I had run into a wall.
In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends' bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record - the first thing I did that was an actual record.
When I broke 20, I said to myself, 'I will give concerts until I'm approximately 30.' And I made it a year and a half late, but, nevertheless, that's what I did. When I broke 30, I said, 'I think I should be recording until I'm about 50.'
When I started to recording, I gave the name of Honeyboy, but my people only knew me by Honey.
I started with Bobby Darin. He signed me to Capitol when I was 15. I was 14, getting ready to be 15. Then the next encounter I had was with I think Peggy Lee. I sang background with The Blossoms with Darlene Love.
The Beach Boys have always been a part of the '60s spectrum, with The Beatles and that kind of thing. They were a part of the music business like everyone else. And they did quite well as a singing group, and I finished a lot of good records, and I'm very proud of them.
And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez.
I made records for 20 years, I lived off it. But people would say I made so many mistakes, I did so many things you're not supposed to do. I had a band name nobody could say. I didn't play live. I never practiced, I never got better at my instrument.
I tell my grandchildren - I've got seven of them - to go to college and get that degree first. I could have stayed in college and still recorded. Isn't that something? The kids of today are doing it.
It was always important to me that I made a record where I really sang well, and I don't think it's happened yet. There's always a possibility with each album that I might not record again, and I wanted to produce one that I could feel was mine.
My recording career has luckily run the gamut of recording environments.
I've lived with my dyslexia and gone on to have a successful recording career, but academically I never had a chance in hell because I didn't fall into that bracket.
I get to sit at home with the dogs on the sofa, record in a closet in the office, send them off and, if I'm lucky, make a million dollars.
As an artist, you dream about accumulating enough successful music to someday do just one greatest-hits album, but to reach the point where you're releasing your second collection of hits is beyond belief.
I made my first album, and I guess it wasn't a fluke, because now I'm on my 16th.
I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.
