I was born a native New Yorker and the youngest of seven.
My love of all music began in early 1965, in my bassinet under the bedroom window, right next to a portable Panasonic record player. Night after night, my mom or older sister used to play one particular record to lull me to sleep. I would lay awake and look through that window, up into the trees, watching leaves dancing against the night sky and listening to side 1 or 2 of the record, which was Rodgers & Hammerstein Played by the Melanchrino String Orchestra. To this day, I remember every single note of that recording.
Music served as the background fabric of my 60s/70s childhood. My mother, an artist, designer, jitterbug enthusiast and former WAC (Woman's Army Corps) from WWII, shared her love of music and dance withall of us. She would practice scales and chords on the old upright piano in the living room; she made certain that music wove through the house all day long, either through the radio or from the RCA stereo record player. As baby seven, my daily musical diet included Frank Sinatra and Jack Jones, Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Billy Strayhorn, the Duke Ellington orchestra, Julie London and Peggy Lee.
My father, traditional by nature, added his love of choral music, gospel, spirituals and Broadway to the mix, while upstairs, my older sisters and brothers, nestled in the civil rights movement and soul, were students of Motown, Tamla, Stax, the British Invasion and what is now referred to as classic rock.
My surrounding musical influences being what they were, I found a needed means of expression singing into the television antenna while perched on the edge of a portable bassinet. I soon fell out of it, and have not stopped singing since.