(piano music)
- I mean I cannot give up.
This is America.
I don't give a damn what anybody tell ya,
this is America
and I love it.
So if somebody don't like something I do,
that's his or her prerogative.
Just like it's mine.
(fast paced piano music)
See, my mom taught me a lot, man.
A lot about minding your own business
and leaving other people's business alone
and let them think what they want.
I mean, I can't help what I sound like.
What I sound like, it's what I am.
I cannot be anything other than what I am.
I don't sing Georgia like the record.
I sing Georgia true.
I sing Hit the Road Jack true.
I sing what I sing true.
Each night I sing it the way I feel that night.
♫ I know the little girl on my mind
Ain't no way in the fuck I can sing Georgia
the same way I played it on the day
because I'd have to go study myself and learn.
I mean, it really would be a chore.
That's why I can't lip-sync.
♫ Keeps Georgia on my mind
Somebody asked me one time,
what I feel about being called a genius.
Do I feel I have to live up to something?
I mean, it ain't that kinda ball game.
I feel that whatever people say about me
or call me, you know, I mean all the little adjectives
and different things that people have put on me
and things have said it.
But I had nothing to do with that.
I never said I was a genius.
I never said I was a corner stone.
I never said I'm a legend in my own time.
You never heard me say nothing like that.
What I got to live up to is being myself.
If I do that, the rest will take care of itself.
I think that most great artists who are
extremely known as I am
would intimidate a lot of people.
I don't want to do that to people.
But I know I do, yes.
When I'm having a rehearsal
and there are new guys who come into try out for the job,
I always let my conductor rehearse them
because I don't want the guy to get bent outta shape
'cause I walk in.
I always stay out of the rehearsal room.
You know, when they first come in.
Then once they've had chance to play a little bit,
then I walk in.
'Cause I've seen guys fall apart, man.
♫ One of these days and it won't be long
I remember the first time I went to Carnegie Hall
and normally you would think that you would be scared stiff.
You know, I mean that's what you're supposed to be.
At least according to what anybody...
Wherein for me, as opposed to being scared,
I was so glad and something I always wanted all my.
If I ever got to, you ever have something in your mind
and you say, "Oh lord, this is the ultimate of my goal."
I couldn't wait to get out on stage.
So I never was,
I was so happy to be able to play Carnegie Hall
and be there.
I guess I didn't take time to say,
"Look fool, you better get nervous about this place."
(laughing)
(piano playing)
The public has supported me, man.
Do you know that?
Even when I was nobody.
Even through all the trials and tribulations and suffering
and stuff I went through.
They still stuck by me
and that's why I believe in giving the public
the best I got every night.
I never go out there and half do,
I don't care how big the audience is.
If we got 500 or 5,000, I work the same.
Because I want those 500 to go back and say,
"Man, it wasn't too many of us there,
but boy they put on a helluva show."
(fast paced piano music)
- I didn't mind working in the clubs
but I resented it being in a club where pimps hang out.
Because the music that I create
is of a higher intellect than that.
It is, not only, encompass the pimps,
but whores, ball players, executives, everybody.
(funky soul music)
I laid my clothes out the night before school started.
And my birthday is September 12th.
So, school happened to hit this year on my birthday.
This is my 18th birthday.
I was getting ready to graduate.
I was at a all boys school, bad boys,
called Jacob A Riis.
- [Joe Smith] That's in L.A.?
- [Barry White] Yeah, southeast Los Angeles.
But when I got up the next morning,
I wasn't going to school, Joe.
Something said, "You're going to Hollywood today."
And I was standing there, combing my hair in the mirror
and I said, "Mama, I'm not going to school today."
She went crazy, "Baby, you gotta go to school!
It's your last semester! You don't graduate."
I gotta go to Hollywood
today.
I walked all the way up to Hollywood and Vine.
And I stood on the left corner, facing Capitol,
before you cross over.
Capitol records always represented Hollywood to me.
I stood there about three and a half, four hours,
just looking.
Looking at the cars, looking at the people moving,
people with brief cases.
It really inspired me.
I knew that's where I wanted to be.
("You're the First, My Last, My Everything")
- What was it like around Hollywood
for a young guy trying to make it there?
Was it hard? - Very tough.
If you were a young kid, 19, 20 years old,
who has two children and a third one on the way,
and refuses to leave them,
a kid who was on welfare
because he refused to steal anybody's property
or take anybody's money,
You found life a lot tougher.
♫ My kind of wonderful
♫ That's what you are
I came in to it knowing what I had to offer.
All I had was the will and the love for music.
I couldn't read music or write it.
No connections, no car, no money, no bankroll,
no clothes, no nothing.
But what I loved about it was
you were always able to meet somebody interesting
that was doing something.
I'm the boy with the flapping shoes.
I'm the one who was not embarrassed to walk up in front
of you with his flapping shoes
and ask you, "Did you have anything for me to do?"
I knew I didn't know.
I never came to this industry with an ego
ever in my life.
I knew I had to learn.
I knew I had to earn that car.
I knew I had to earn those shoes.
I had to earn that coat to wear in Hollywood.
And I wanted to earn it in Hollywood.
Everyone, to me, has to pick a subject
to talk about in music if you're gonna be a writer.
Mine is love.
Because I know when a man's making love,
the last thing he thinks about is war.
- [Joe Smith] I guess so, yeah.
- Okay, the last thing he thinks about
is how can he blow up a nation.
Fleas fuck, flies, snakes,
everybody's into love making, Joe.
Besides that, it's the most powerful element
that men and women possess.
Most of us don't know how to use it
but we all possess it.
Women use the music
to get their men to relate to them better.
Talk to me, tell me what's on your mind.
Men use the music to get the girls in the mood to make love.
So either way you had it,
Barry White is the one artist
who actually was in your bedroom with you
at your most sacred, sensuous moment of your life.
("Can't Get Enough Of Your Love")
- You know when I come to England we get together
and go to a pub, you know, have some drinks.
- [Barney] Gong to a pub with Stevie Wonder.
- [Stevie] Hey mate, you Stevie Wonder?
(laughing)
If you're Stevie Wonder,
tell me how many finger's I've got up.
If you're Stevie Wonder,
you can't tell me how many fingers I've got up.
- [Barney] Four.
- [Stevie] See, I knew you weren't Stevie Wonder!
You weren't supposed to tell me that.
(laughing)
♫ Oh, little girl
♫ How happy I would be
- I've been hearing an album by Sam Cooke.
♫ If some miracle will let you love me
♫ In your love, I'll be
I think melodies are like angels from heaven,
expressing a place for the heart to follow.
♫ Pretty little angel
And I think also, I mean,
I think the voice has a lot to do with your spirit.
If your spirit feels right,
then your voice stay pretty consistently the same
from that point of maturity.
♫ Whoa
Y'all gotta be quieter
or don't talk at all.
- The sort of fun you have
is it the same way you behaved when you were little Stevie?
When you were 12 years old?
- [Stevie] Yes.
Well, yeah, I'm gonna always feel that way.
- [Barney] Were you like that on the bus
during the Motown breeze?
- [Stevie] I'm probably worse now.
You know, in America,
if African Americans, we say
if your hair's real coarse,
and so you call it nappy.
Nappy Hair.
- [Barney] Yeah.
- [Stevie] And so I remember I woke up one time,
I had been sleeping on the bus
and The Temptations were there.
I don't know, I was half asleep,
I said, "Oh my hair hurts me."
So I think it was Paul Williams said,
"Well your hair is so nappy it hurts your head.
Your hair is hurting you."
So he used to call me Nappy Wonder.
("Looking Back")
- [Barney] Looking back when you were
a little nappy headed boy.
What were the things that got you through
the hardships of your childhood?
- [Stevie] I think that I really
didn't understand the severity of the situation
or the circumstances.
I think I was so in love with my mother and my brothers,
my sister, my friends, just in love with
the discovery of life, itself,
that my focus was not on those things.
I think I discovered, you know, the whole thing of color
when I went down south.
Once, when my grandmother passed away,
and there was some kids, some white kids that lived nearby,
and the kids, "Hey, nigger!"
Whatever they said.
- [Barney] You heard that word?
- [Stevie] I think I may have heard it
but I said, "What? I'm from Detroit."
I started throwing rocks over at the,
"Son, you better not do that or you're getting in trouble."
I said, "I don't care!"
I didn't hit the kid
and you know I kept throwing stuff.
I just, I've never accepted stupidity and ignorance
as making me then determine how good I was
or how less I was.
(funky soul music)
Since I can best remember,
I've had a great relationship with God.
And for me, God was like a father.
He was always someone that I could touch.
And then he had me in his arms
and I was that way.
I always felt that God was about good.
But, for instance, when I was in church,
I was in a Pentecostal church,
there as a little boy.
And back then it was a little different than now
but they said, "You singing that worldy music."
And, you know, they were criticizing what I was doing.
Listen, I mean, we live in a society where
black music, at one time, was called race music.
Where jazz was considered something nasty, you know.
I don't know.
I felt that if God didn't want me to sing it,
he wouldn't have given me the talent to do it.
(funky soul music)