Legacies Project Oral History: Leslie Guinn

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 12:06pm

When: 2022

Transcript

[00:00:13] Leslie Guinn: Do I have to sit a certain way? Doesn't make any difference. Can do this as long as I don't kick the mic? [LAUGHTER]
[00:00:20] INTERVIEWER: This is an interview for the Legacies Project, which has students gathering oral histories and putting them into an archive for future generations. Just some pointers are to the best of your ability, please ignore the camera. While you're asking certainly wander maybe look at me and please do not look directly at the camera lens. Each video is about six minutes on and if you're in the middle answering your question and we have to change shape, this actually will happen because we have to fix that. Then also, just in general to you guys, it's time to turn off or silence cell phones, pagers, or anything else that chimes or otherwise makes noise. You can call for a break at any time if you want one. Also, please remember that you can decline to answer any question or terminate the interview at any time for any reason.
[00:01:05] Leslie Guinn: I'm out of here [LAUGHTER]. Did you say 60 minutes, 6, 0?
[00:01:11] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, but there will be a break in between.
[00:01:13] Leslie Guinn: No, that's all right then. We're doing one today. I didn't pack a lunch [LAUGHTER].
[00:01:19] INTERVIEWER: I'm first going to ask you some simple demographic questions. These questions may jog memories, please keep your answers brief and to the point for now, we can elaborate later in the interview. Please say and spell your name.
[00:01:32] Leslie Guinn: Leslie Guinn, L-E-S-L-I-E, G-U-I-N-N.
[00:01:38] INTERVIEWER: What's your birthdate, including the year?
[00:01:40] Leslie Guinn: April 29th, 1935.
[00:01:43] INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your ethnic background?
[00:01:46] Leslie Guinn: My ethnic? I don't know. I'm Scotch and Irish. Is that what you mean or Caucasian? But I'm Scotch Irish, I was told with a little Dutch in there somewhere.
[00:02:00] INTERVIEWER: What is your religious affiliation, if any?
[00:02:02] Leslie Guinn: Catholic.
[00:02:04] INTERVIEWER: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed, and did you attend any additional school or formal career training beyond where you completed?
[00:02:13] Leslie Guinn: I have just a bachelor's degree in music performance and voice. It's hard to answer the second part because in performance you're studying all the time, so not enrolled in something other than maybe a summer something or other academy or something for summer when I was younger, but not post degrees or anything like that, but it's just constant study.
[00:02:45] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
[00:02:47] Leslie Guinn: Married.
[00:02:49] INTERVIEWER: Is your spouse still living?
[00:02:50] Leslie Guinn: Yes, she is.
[00:02:52] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
[00:02:53] Leslie Guinn: Three.
[00:02:54] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
[00:02:55] Leslie Guinn: None.
[00:02:57] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to live in?
[00:03:05] Leslie Guinn: It's in two parts. May I just go ahead with this? I started doing nothing but singing after I'd gotten out of college and so forth. Then became a professor here. While I was a professor here, I continued to perform a lot. I don't know whether to say professor or singer, because it's really equalized in best of both worlds.
[00:03:33] INTERVIEWER: What age did you retire?
[00:03:35] Leslie Guinn: Sixty-five, I believe it was. I could do the math with help [LAUGHTER].
[00:03:43] INTERVIEWER: Now we're going to begin the first part of our interview beginning with some of the things you can recall about your family history. We're beginning with family naming history. By this, we mean any story about your last or family name or family traditions in selecting first or middle names.
[00:03:57] Leslie Guinn: Wait a minute, say that last part again, just a little slower.
[00:04:00] INTERVIEWER: We're beginning with family meeting history. By this, we mean any story about your last name or family traditions in selecting first or middle names.
[00:04:13] Leslie Guinn: My dad had only two names the first and last. The whole jokes about too poor to have middle and so forth would have been true in his case. I was named after my dad. My middle name came from a cousin. I don't know. There was not a lot of communication on my dad's side of the family about history at all, very, little. I never knew his mother because she died before I was born. I barely knew his father. There was not a lot of closeness, not antipathy, but there's just not a lot of closeness in their family, though everybody lived within about 30, 40 miles of each other. The problem, it just didn't exist. There were not sitting, there weren't opportunities to say, uncle, so and so, not really. I just grew up without that part of information. Would have loved it in retrospect.
[00:05:09] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any stories about your family name that you know?
[00:05:14] Leslie Guinn: My family what?
[00:05:15] INTERVIEWER: Name.
[00:05:17] Leslie Guinn: Not a one. That's just what I was bemoaning, I wish I did.
[00:05:24] INTERVIEWER: Are there any naming traditions in your family?
[00:05:28] Leslie Guinn: Not that I know of, no.
[00:05:31] INTERVIEWER: Why did your ancestors come to the United States?
[00:05:33] Leslie Guinn: I have no clue.
[00:05:36] INTERVIEWER: Do you know, any stories about how your family first came to the United States or where they first settled?
[00:05:41] Leslie Guinn: No. You're not speaking of my parents, you're speaking of the family, no.
[00:05:49] INTERVIEWER: How did they make a living, either in the old country and the United States?
[00:05:53] Leslie Guinn: I don't know that either. My parents, yes, but I don't know anything about, they were just my dad's family and were very uneducated. It was just labor. Mostly. [NOISE]
[00:06:07] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any family migration once they arrived in the United States, and how long they came to [inaudible 00:06:12]
[00:06:16] Leslie Guinn: My dad was born in a little town called Linden, Texas. All I know is that he moved into my hometown, Harry Conroe because he worked in the oil business as the roughneck can engage your interest about and all of those things and they just followed the drilling That was during the time of the big oil boom in that part of Texas this very new Houston, huge. It was the third-largest oilfield in the United States. A lot of work and they just followed that work. Do manual labor.
[00:06:53] INTERVIEWER: Do you know what possessions they brought with them and why?
[00:06:56] Leslie Guinn: Not a clue.
[00:06:58] INTERVIEWER: Do you know which family members came along or stayed behind?
[00:07:01] Leslie Guinn: No. I haven't even mentioned my mother's family. I don't know if I should separate them. I know no more about her family really, though I've been around them more, but I can tell you a few things. You're not asking about how many siblings they have, not of that sort. Particularly important, just started lives. It seems to me as I look back on hearing about it.
[00:07:24] INTERVIEWER: Well, do you know stories from your mother's side at all?
[00:07:33] Leslie Guinn: She had a younger brother. Her father died of, I want to say the flu. I think one of those epidemics, when she was a young girl, she had a brother who died from something similar. I don't know anything though about, I don't remember for the moment where she was born, Texas, yes, but I don't know just where. She moved to Conroe because she married my dad, but I don't know what got her into that immediate area. I'm really poorly informed about that. I'm not happy about that, but damn, nonetheless.
[00:08:18] INTERVIEWER: To your knowledge, did they make any effort to preserve any traditions and customs from their country of origin?
[00:08:23] Leslie Guinn: Not to my knowledge. Which is zero.
[00:08:31] INTERVIEWER: Are there any traditions that your family has given up or changed, and why?
[00:08:35] Leslie Guinn: Are you speaking of my ancestors and not my immediate family? There weren't traditions. That goes back to the lack of communication. There was not a big emphasis on celebratory events. Christmas was, of course, all these things were celebrated, but there wasn't a lot of prep. I'm an only child. There's not a lot of stuff going on there and my dad, he did not grow up in an affection family. There's nothing ominous in this segment. It just was very matter of fact, tried to get enough food on the table, livelihood for him. There was just not a lot of stuff carried forth. I never went without but I didn't have my own car till of I was 45 [LAUGHTER]
[00:09:38] Leslie Guinn: No traditions.
[00:09:41] INTERVIEWER: What stories have come down to you about your parents and grandparents, and then obviously you're more distant ancestors and it's okay if you can?
[00:09:49] Leslie Guinn: Yeah, I don't have any information about my ancestors and stories, but you mean just anecdotal stuff for people who have no historical importance? I don't know what to say, my mother married very young. She was 16-and-a-half. My dad was 24 or 5. I think she might have married early to leave whatever circumstances she was in, not because she didn't love my dad, but received married till he died. But that remind me the question. I'm sorry I forgot, my mind went off ways and we're all else from here.
[00:10:40] INTERVIEWER: No worries. What stories that come down to you about your parents and grandparents?
[00:10:49] Leslie Guinn: Very few. I don't even know where to begin, just my dad and my mother and it's interesting to think about it now, didn't tell me stories, but they told my wife stories and then she would tell me. Some of them were just earth-shaking for my mother and she never confided in me and I didn't bring it up to her because for whatever reason she chose to share it with my wife and my dad didn't share things like that at all. He had a rough time during the depression riding railroad cars going one place to the other and worrying of who hits again. I'm saying more right now than he probably ever said about it in his life. He didn't elaborate about anything. He just took what came his way and did what he had to do, but there were some scary moments for him he was a young man and I think he managed to harm himself somehow because people would knock you in the head for half sandwich or something in those days, at least where he was. On my mother's side she had some siblings and she had one interesting brother and my uncle who was rough and ready guy and incredible fishermen and hunter, and he worked from one thing to the other and I'm sure I was the, let me think was I first. Now I don't think I was the first to go to college within the extended family. I think I had a cousin, the one I've named after in the middle name who got to school, but he was older than I am from another sibling of course, so not much there. There's just isn't not I'm sorry for my sake that I don't know more about all of that. Very loving. I don't want to paint the wrong picture here. I was spoiled rotten just as much as they could do. I'd never wanted for affection or anything, so it's not what's not I had a wonderful child, but if he's talking about it in tangible things, graves don't mean to get all heavier, but that's what it is.
[00:13:23] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any courtship stories about how your parents, grandparents or other relatives came to meet Mary?
[00:13:30] Leslie Guinn: No, I don't know how my mother and father met. I have an idea that it was probably at some dance. People on the weekends it's almost like homesteading although it would have been I think they married in 33, somewhere like the hotel. Yeah, because I was born in '35 and so that people would get they didn't go with them that go with some friends. I think just from looking at very few old pictures and in those days pictures were not so easily had, and so they're very few of that and my parents neither of them saved things of that nature and just documentation of things of me. Yes, I was the shining light. It was just they really worked the ground I walked on which was great, except when I got into my '50s, I got all heavy for me then, [LAUGHTER] so I don't know what else to say about it.
[00:14:57] INTERVIEWER: The next part of the interview is about your childhood. Up until you began attending school, even if these questions jog memories about other times in your life, please call me respond to memories from his rebellious particularly, so the first part is the local residents community, where did you grow up and what are your strongest memories at that place?
[00:15:22] Leslie Guinn: The memories I have prior to beginning Kindergarten were out in what was called an oil field camp and that's where the workers lived, not in dormitory things, but it would just be an area. There would be maybe five or six families. They're each in their own home that I don't know if they built or what, it's just a little two room thing, it looks kitchen facilities in one and sleeping and sitting in another and outdoor privies stuff, and they were all like that pretty much. I shouldn't say that somewhere bigger families they had different things, and so I certainly don't remember anything from two or three, but I remember having my first tricycle out there and getting a bill for it from a neighbor, things like that were very bright in my memory having a refrigerator. If you could call it that we used to be an icebox and then they got something that ran on I think gas. I don't remember we must have had electricity or maybe not. They were unit what to do I feel flare is have you seen on the news or where there are these refineries and big pipes but well, those were just all over 100 yards away that'd be one and over here another. They're not so tall in those days because this was not a refinery. This was just oil wells and pumping units and things like that, so it probably was running on some form of gas and I just remember something broken it was toxic. I just remember this vague memory of people going in and a sulfur, have you ever had a match say like a big kitchen match struck right underneath or near your face in the sulfur that comes up that just takes your breath away, that's what it was like to walk in the house and I was sheltered from that. I just remember getting the tiniest wiff, I say I remember how good is my memory of that period and people dragging this thing out and putting them in tanker chips over their faces. That's not important, but to said strong memories that's a very strong memory one of the handful that I have of that period, but it was in snakes. A lot of this is Texas after all, Southeast Texas a lot of snakes around, that's just a way of life just any place else. I don't have memories of what took place in the kitchen. I was probably bathed in a tub or I didn't mean a bathtub, we didn't have anything like that or kitchen sink or zinc tub, a wash tub. Have no idea everybody he didn't feel special or deprived or anything.
[00:18:21] Leslie Guinn: I don't remember. Oh, I have another memory eating sugar cane. I remember telling you guys when we first met about my dad walking through the field and just suffered, but sugarcane this was in Louisiana and this was again just getting in the car with my mom and dad and going wherever the next drilling rig was going up that he was hired to do, and this was in Louisiana at that whole area there. Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, a lot of oil work there. Then sitting on the back porch of some little place where we rented a room and eating sugarcane. That's a strong memory. Don't ask why, I don't know. I love sugarcane well, and so maybe that's it. You guys ever had sugarcane, can I ask you questions? No. [LAUGHTER] Later.
[00:19:09] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live on the oil fields?
[00:19:13] Leslie Guinn: I think that just because it was labor. That's all. No education, I think I mentioned my dad had second or third grade, I'd forgotten to put if he finished second or middle of third, and he was dyslexic. He didn't know that, nobody knew that, nobody ever heard of it. But learning was a really big problem. Good mind, but getting to know him didn't know what was working in there now, so he just had to make a living with his body. I don't think he ever resented it, it's just what it was, and I worked for him later in life. When a high-school kid, just he worked in the oil field painting oil field equipment, and so it was a good summer job for me. I think there's about a buck 50 an hour then. [LAUGHTER].
[00:20:06] INTERVIEWER: What was your house there like?
[00:20:10] Leslie Guinn: My what?
[00:20:10] INTERVIEWER: Your house?
[00:20:11] Leslie Guinn: Oh, house? This is now after I'm five years old, after I'm in school or something, because we lived in this oil field campus I mentioned that's about roughly 15 miles out of the town of Chondrule, which at that time had a population of maybe 1,000 or 1,500 at the most. Great schools because of the oil field companies and the taxes they had to pay. Fantastic school system in terms of education, and when I think back around, it's just amazing. My parents had a mover, meaning somebody with a big truck, put this little two room, whatever you want to call it, shack or else, on the back of a truck and move it into town, this was not uncommon then, and put it on cement blocks on this little corner lot my parents had bought, and they bought it because it was four blocks from the high school, three blocks from the elementary school, and I could ride my bike to the middle school when that came around in six, seven minutes, it was that close. It was a perfect location in terms of taking care of me. The house was just this two roomed thing that I that I described with an outdoor privy. Then they built onto it, and this would have been about 1940 when we moved into town, they built what we called, and that was not uncommon either, a sleeping porch so that the length of the house had one room, not very long house either [LAUGHTER] and they slept at one end of it, I slept at the other end until I was 14, and then they built a new house, about thousand square feet on that same piece of land, built it in front of the old one, and then I don't know what they have. They got rid of the old one back there. It was modest, but I remember how exciting it was to have a bathroom inside. Before that new house, I slept in the kitchen on a card of some kind, and I don't remember now all of the details then we've built this little house and I had my own bedroom and that was great to have that and it's still there. [LAUGHTER] My mother would not move from that home. She died when she was 86 or 7, 10 years or something ago and she, no matter what in treaties were made, she wasn't her and a friend that she had known since she and my dad were married, told me once, he said she's going to be carried out feet first, which is a common saying, but that's exactly what happened. She had a stroke and they carried her out, and then she was in 100 care for about a month before she passed away. This all sounds so gloomy, but it's not. Boy, I didn't just had a wonderful time. I really did.
[00:23:26] INTERVIEWER: How many people lived in the house with you when you were growing up and what was their relationship to you?
[00:23:32] Leslie Guinn: My mother and father, just the two. That's all. We'd have a visitor or something, my cousin might come and stay a few days or my grandmother might come down. Almost never but in all of that. That's all. Just that we didn't have room for anything else. During the war, I remember the husband of an aunt of mine, but these are young people in their 20s. Sounds like older people, but he was in World War II in the Navy and he came and stayed for a number of days and took him out when 90 was tying to eat from Tacoma, Washington and very athletic and he was dying when he discovered armadillos, which are just like dogs down there in the woods. He wanted to catch one and ship it back to Tacoma so we could have it. But I don't know what he was going to do with it, but he did try. But we went out at night with flashlights in the woods, we're 10 miles out of town somewhere, and I remember vividly and I was just 10 years old, but then maybe 11, and he was growing like a bat out of hell with this flash. Everybody in the family, it'd be another two or three guys around and running into trees because his head was down, he was going crazy trying to catch this armadillo, but you don't have a chance to do that dangerous too [NOISE] because their claws.
[00:25:05] INTERVIEWER: Who did you find in the reeds?
[00:25:07] Leslie Guinn: It's exciting.
[00:25:08] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] [inaudible 00:25:32] [BACKGROUND].
[00:25:33] Leslie Guinn: These are different lights, aren't they?
[00:25:34] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[00:25:34] Leslie Guinn: Because it does seem really bright. It's not uncomfortable. I really want to spend my day here, but it is different. I sort of see you and I sort of don't. [LAUGHTER] It's true. No. [BACKGROUND] I was listening to an interview about Clint Eastwood the other day. I think it was Tom Hanks who has done some movies with him and he said Eastwood never says things like action or so. He just says, "Okay, whenever you're ready." It's like that. At the end they say, instead of cut, he says, "That's enough of that. [LAUGHTER] [NOISE]
[00:26:22] INTERVIEWER: Today we'll discuss your time as a young person from about the time that school attendance typically begins in the United States up until you begin your professional career in life. You can call for a break at any time you want one. Also, please remember that you can decline to answer any question or terminate the interview at any time for any reason. Did you go to preschool? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:26:49] Leslie Guinn: No [LAUGHTER] and nothing. [LAUGHTER]
[00:26:53] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to kindergarten?
[00:26:54] Leslie Guinn: Yes.
[00:26:55] INTERVIEWER: Where.
[00:26:56] Leslie Guinn: In my hometown of Conroe. I went all through that school system there. [NOISE] I loved it. Half a day naps, what's not to like? Cookies.
[00:27:11] INTERVIEWER: What do you remember best about it?
[00:27:13] Leslie Guinn: I'm sorry, remember what?
[00:27:14] INTERVIEWER: Best about kindergarten.
[00:27:18] Leslie Guinn: Really just fun. It was great. I was happy at home, so I was anxious to get away, but it was very close. I could walk escorted. My mom would walk me down about three blocks and that's my memory at least. I was five years old. [NOISE] Just fun. Remember my teacher's name, all of that stuff, Ms. Ratti, so good time.
[00:27:45] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to elementary school? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:27:48] Leslie Guinn: Elementary school right there in the same building, as a matter of fact, as kindergarten, Grades 1 through 5. The sixth grade was in these modules that they had finally because things were growing a little bit. Keep in mind this was a small town [NOISE]. Great school. I may have mentioned in our last session was traumatic at the beginning because I was going into first grade and they mistakenly placed me in third grade and I didn't know how to read because my family didn't read. I just had that terrifying incident of being handed a book. I'm being asked to read such and such a paragraph and to me, it was hieroglyphics or something. The teacher immediately. It was happening. Ms. Alley by the way was her name. Isn't it funny how you remember those names of 100 years ago? They just gotten the names mixed up and took me down with first grade where they were all sitting in the classroom singing the White Cliffs of Dover. I was in my element and because of my music, so that's what I really remember. Then I remember in the second grade having my mouth washed out with soap for writing. This was an evil lady who was teaching second grade. [NOISE] She was not very skilled. A boy and I were exchanging notes with words on them that we didn't even spell correctly. I won't see them out here. They're not bad, but I'll say one of them, son of a bitch, but we spelled it S-U-N. We just knew it was forbidden. We didn't have a clue. Somebody said they're passing notes Ms. Martin. She of course eyes splashing and intercepted the notes and was just scandalized these two seven-year-olds and took us into the restroom and made us wash our mouths out with soap. Then I was terrified for years that somebody was going to tell my parents who wouldn't have done a darn thing. It was just one of those goofy things. It was all just great fun. Because of my musical drive, I loved being in the choir we had there when we got into the Grades 4, 5, and 6 somewhere in there. We ran errands for the lady who ran. She would just pull us out of class and send this off to get her dry cleaning or something like that and she was renting a room. This was in the old days. Ms. Moore was her name. We would go and shoot pool in the basement of this rambling old house. Those are wonderful memories, they really are. Then [NOISE] I don't remember too much about the modules. I think we probably had different teachers brought in, but none of it was unpleasant except for the second grade which scarred me for life.
[00:30:50] Leslie Guinn: Excuse me one moment, I'll be back.
[00:30:53] Leslie Guinn: We'll save your place. [NOISE]
[00:31:01] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to high school? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:31:05] Leslie Guinn: Everything was right in the same town. High school was [NOISE] on a different street and it was one block further away, so it was four blocks away instead of three. As I said once before, I think I just had a wonderful childhood in spite of whatever without a lot of affluence in the town. There were some, but we weren't part of that. It just a wonderfully loving setup and I had all the attention I could stand because I was an only child and I was visible because I was musical, just born with that. In my little Baptist church, I sang all the time. That was so beautiful and all this stuff the children or any child thrives on. I didn't have any of the angst that goes with will I be liked or not liked and all that stuff. In high school, I just carried right on with all the music stuff and sang at all the service clubs in town and played trumpet in the band and sang with the band, and it was just one long musical thing. I was not a very good student in other areas because I was having too much fun with music. I got through it, but I didn't. I laughed because I think probably my grade point average, I don't know exactly, but it was probably really B minus or something like that. I was admitted to Northwestern. Now that's crazy because things were different then and on a scholarship to boot related to, again, my music stuff. I don't know. I know I'm reasonably intelligent and my parents were, but there was just no discussion of anything with current events. This was, of course, war was in the middle of part of that from in round numbers 12, 39-45. I was just in grade school, but that just did every that affected society. [NOISE] Our day revolved around choir rehearsal, band rehearsal, getting by on whatever it was at school that I needed acting. We did have a little bit of theater there and did plays a couple of times. But I can't think of it. They're just incredible. It was just one. Yes, I could just tell you start story of performances. But it was all of that tied in that kept me active and satisfied and all of that and discovering girls when I was an adolescent and all that stuff. It was a great time, really was and it was a very safe little town but large enough since it was a county seat and it was growing when I was first aware of populations I think around 1,500. When I left to go to college, it had probably doubled or more than that too. It's still pretty darn small, four or 5,000 people. Now it's just a big bedroom for Houston. It's a different animal now. But I don't know. I'm trying to think if there was anything happening during that period. Well, yeah, a big deal happened in high school when we hired for the first time a choir director. I'm going to talk about music because that's been my driving force in terms of employment and all of that stuff. I started playing trumpet when I was in the sixth grade just because it was musical outlet and I loved hearing it. I also played in a marching band in junior high, but then my voice began to change, which was never one of those traumatic or dramatic things for me. My voice didn't crackle and just went through that easily for me. Some people are like that. I played and enjoyed all those things in junior high school. Didn't enjoy junior high school, but I enjoyed those musical experiences. The band director was just a great guy, which also helps. Then when we got to high school, which was 9, 10, 11, 12 grades, I enjoyed being in the band there. We didn't have a choir until my junior year and they hired somebody who was from the University of Minnesota, had his Masters in Music Education Choral Conducting. We got him because he was singing. Have you ever heard of Tommy Dorsey? By any chance, your parents will have heard of Tommy Dorsey, very famous big band. This was the era of the big band. His brother was Jimmy Dorsey, who also had his own band. These were big names then. My choir director, John Burgoyne was a soloist with the Jimmy Dorsey band. He was trying to feed his young family having just graduated. He had a very nice voice, not a big-time voice but a good voice. They were doing a week or two stand at a major hotel in Houston. Our high school principal and superintendent went to hear them just go out with their wives into Houston to do that. Met him, invited him over to their table. They started chatting, found out his background, asked him if he'd be interested in teaching in my hometown. It's just amazing how these things occur. While he moved to Conroe, made up our choral program. He's the first voice teacher I ever had. He was very nurturing, had a college education in music. I didn't know anyone like that. At the time, there was no one around like that.
[00:37:24] Leslie Guinn: He was so encouraging. He was responsible for my going to Northwestern because he said he felt like I could have a career in music and he said, you've grown up in this unsophisticated atmosphere and you made it in terms of the arts. We need you in an environment where you can be really educated in the arts and exposed basically but at reasonably safe environment. I wasn't chewing on a piece of straw in my overalls. I wasn't that naive, but he felt that because Evanston was a first-orde first one is a great school but Evanston is so close to Chicago with the Chicago Symphony and their to tell those things. He was right. It was a quasi-safe environment for me just in terms of physical environment and very good school, good education, and an exposure to the Chicago Symphony where I could go hear legendary performers. [NOISE] I had named them, but there are so many generations removed and all passed away by now. But 50 cents as a student, those statement, I've been back both seeing where the Symphony since then many times and been there as just as an audience member and you pay a hunk of money to hear these same things. I was so naive, sitting there in nosebleed section and hearing Rubinstein, who most people know that name, with Chicago Symphony playing just a huge famous concierto and fell asleep. I didn't know what I was listening to. When I tell pianist friends of mine, their hair falls out. [LAUGHTER] It's just amazing. Anyway, I was exposed to that and gradually began to realize what was being poured over me. But all of that came around because of me not having a career so I think I would've been driven in one way or another. But setting it up so it was that good environment for me. One thing led to another. His letter recommending me for admission I'm sure it was a big deal and it helped me get this scholarship. By the way, tuition my freshman year at Northwestern was $400 a year. [LAUGHTER] That wouldn't buy your parking sticker for a quarter there. There were only quarter system I just remembered. It doubled in my four years. It was just $20 shy of 800 when I left. But I thought my gosh, and I learned as our children went on to college and now our grandson just graduated from Boston College not Boston College, but in Boston. I'll just boast, he graduated from Harvard for God's sake. But that's a hunk of money, I hope you edit that part out. That I don't want to do that. That's tacky, but I thought we'd see the humor in it. But anyway, the tuition stuff and all that, we were poor, as I've said, and so that all made that possible. It was really just so many things about that started in high school. They had a lot of teachers there who were very nurturing, didn't know anything about music, but just in terms of personal choices and things like that that are a big part of growing up, I think. But high school was a dream. I just had a great time. I'm sorry for people who don't and I realized the more I taught, never anything outside of the college level but these little things you say that you just toss off to a student for good or not, they remember, as I've remembered some for myself and I've had former students occasionally will say, thank you for this or that. They don't tell you the bad stuff but you know it's out there and you think, I don't remember telling you that. You realize it's humbling, it's what it is. You realize the influence you should have and could have and one needs to give more thought to that. But all of that was just a dream. I'm sure I went through things that I don't choose to remember on some level, but no big traumatic things. There are always familiar things that take place in every family, it's impossible not to. That was all good. But music, it's an incredible source of deep pleasure for me and still is, not as a performer anymore, but just I couldn't begin to describe the effect music has on me and for all people who really, no matter what music. For me it's always some classical basis I think and I seem to get most emotional pleasure, but not solely through the romantic period in music. Tory, I can't separate and it helps me, probably keeps me rather from dwelling on things that weren't as pleasant as I remember them. Next. [LAUGHTER]
[00:43:07] INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about your school or career training besides high school? It's okay if you want to go more into stuff about college, but also any career training you did besides your course training?
[00:43:24] Leslie Guinn: Sure. [NOISE] You're not talking about my work life after college, but I want to make sure I understand your question. You're asking about training in my field and music or just training in some other job? Because I've done lots of things in between musical jobs as most people do who go into solo careers.
[00:43:55] INTERVIEWER: Well, you can talk about you career in music [inaudible 00:43:57] .
[00:43:59] Leslie Guinn: What do you want? That's fine either way. Not a lot of training. Well, that's not true. I've taken acting classes, private tutoring, a lot of language. That's not to imply I have a facility for it particularly, but I do have a pretty good ear for all the pronunciation which is, you really landed on for not having right in operad list. It really is and we have to deal with all languages. Things besides German, French, Italian, Catalan, Czech, which by the way was just about the most difficult I ever had to do and I've done Russian and everybody does, in the vocal and do things. I had to get a lot of training in that, you have to keep yourself healthy. I'm not talking about just what you eat, but you do have to be able to move a little bit and I'm not gifted that way at all. But you do have to be able to get across the stage without falling on your face. Sometimes you don't expect that things that are asked of you, so you just have to figure out ways to deal with it. You've been contracted and agreed and signed to do x opera and when you get there, for instance, happened to me in Germany. This was called a raked stage, which for people who don't know, a stage is tilted in the audience's level. Here it's the opposite, the audience is tilted. That's all fine except I was doing voetsek and in this particular opera or play, it's based on two. He's just downtrodden, beaten by everybody and I had found myself at age 50 something having to spend a lot of time in rehearsal and then in performances squatting at the feet of Marie, the woman, and then slowly note the stage is reasonably steep. I then had to get up without holding on to anything and, God help me if I fell, because it's a very dramatic, poignant moment. I had to get up and smoothly get up and maintain my character and do all these things. Those are things that I had to practice but I didn't know, I'm not an athlete. I don't have any particular muscular anything and so I had to gradually get up. It wasn't just a matter of getting up. It was a dramatic, slow who looks like a ballet thing almost, but he said well really, all of that your mind has to be wide open for all things. I had to think about all of that. I had to read about it. I even had discussions about it with colleagues and other professionals. Voice training privately, but it just goes on forever because you can hear yourself. One of the tricks we use as singers and teachers is either for the students or ourselves take a book, any paper back there, and hold it in front of your ears, and then sing and you cuts out some of their normal hearing that we would have. The resistant, it's very informative. You have to learn, it's still much you have to. I hardly know where to begin. You have to study all of those things, but training of particular methods or something, no. No, there is singing, you are the instrument, basically, your whole body. Not just your vocal folds, but your whole body. Any emotional disturbance, and I'll say disturbance from, say a plateau, whether it's exuberance or depression, is going to affect the way your voice sounds. It doesn't matter if you're just speaking with someone and singing is not your thing that affects emotion too. You have to learn to control some parts of that, so you can be depended upon. You can't enjoy the emotion of the moment if you're singing about your heartbreaking and you're crying, you just think all of you, how you feel when you're getting ready to cry, you get a knot in your throat. Well, good luck trying to sing through that and so you have to figure out a way to projects that without. But I can't think of any exciting course of movement courses, postural things, all of that, yes. But that's mostly private tutoring. I may be missing a big element here, but I can think of is just a constant incremental thing when you're working through all that.
[00:49:14] Leslie Guinn: I need a drink of water.
[00:49:15] INTERVIEWER: We going to take a break.
[00:49:34] Leslie Guinn: [LAUGHTER] [inaudible 00:49:34] thing that was for what period?
[00:49:37] INTERVIEWER: From whatever you did them. I just take you to them in elementary school, you talk about it, especially in high school and college [inaudible 00:49:45].
[00:49:47] Leslie Guinn: Shall I just start? The answer would be no for college. It wasn't a week. No, I didn't do college at all. A lot of exercise but not in any sport. When I was in high school, in junior high, I played a little bit of basketball but just B squad stuff, and then when I was in high school and nothing that was organized, the marching band, but that's not a sport, and I was always doing stuff, shooting baskets and playing tennis, things like that. But nothing had a level of competitiveness at all and then as I said, nothing in college.
[00:50:30] INTERVIEWER: [NOISE] But why school experience is cheaper from schools you know today..
[00:50:39] Leslie Guinn: Oh gosh. Lot more freedom today in terms of course selections, career choices, communication. When I was in school, when you think back about Eisenhower and '50s and all of that, where everybody did the same thing, dressed the same thought the same we were not encouraged to do otherwise. That's what I grew up with. Nobody was bothered it was just security after the war, which is when I was coming of age as it were. I think, I mean, I just rolled along as a child. That reminds me of well there I was just thinking of a little country song, but that's how I grew up with all these little things. Today, I just feel like my grandson that I just mentioned was just graduating college. Well, we didn't know what he was going to do. I mean, not that it was we had nothing to do with it. But it didn't matter. He didn't seem to be bothered. Nobody at his university cared. They care a lot, but they give you the freedom to just choose, and it's turning out very well for him, but wouldn't have for somebody else, that just wouldn't have occurred when I was in school view. Well, you've got a core curriculum and God help you if you didn't get everyone, and we had that when I was teaching at the university here that changed [NOISE] gradually over the years and you have a lot more freedom in the graduate programs. But schools now I think in undergraduate programs you just can pick and choose a lot of things and it can be so regimen. It certainly was when I was in college. You've just long to get in some course that wasn't related to your discipline just for the fun of learning about something. I ended up taking astronomy well known. All I knew about astronomy was just Texas skies. I mean, I didn't know scientific inclination toward it or knowledge of it or anything like that, so it was very different. I feel like I don't know. I'm not going to say whether one's better than another. I think there are times when students now have too many choices, they can't get focused, and especially if they have really inquisitive minds and don't have a certain element of discipline to really dig in and figure out something. They just going from one thing to the next and stay with it long enough to just have the fun and excitement and then get going and the stuff that's fine. As long as you've got that other element in your makeup that makes you really want to dig in later. When I was going to school, once you've committed, and I'm not talking about for career now, just for course. You didn't just back out and do something else because you had to have excellent credit hours. Very different heightened. I'm envious in so many ways that the courses that are offered now considered worthwhile that just didn't exist when I was in school or even when I first started here, I think. But I didn't deal with anything outside of teaching voice, how to sing, other than as an advisor. Had to be aware of core curriculum and some things. After a while not even that because I was a graduate advisor and so were they really had the leeway compared to what undergrads have been, so very different.
[00:54:43] INTERVIEWER: What was the popular music like when [inaudible 00:54:44]?
[00:54:51] Leslie Guinn: Group on country western. Real hillbilly stuff. Then when the war came along, which gave us all the Big Band era with Harry James and Frank Sinatra who has been with Jimmy Dorsey and all of these people. That's what I really about the time I became interested in music, not interested music, but in a more disciplined way. Invoice in particular, that's what night ear was just filled with because it was on all the time, so I loved it. There was nothing nothing like the variety that exists today. I don't turn my nose up at it. I just can't find the beauty and certain things in music to me is adventuresome it can be stimulating, it can be irritating, but in a good intellectual way, and I'll say spiritual for lack of a better word, but visceral way. The sounds that I grew up with are those beautiful, long lined. There's some of those people who's saying, and I like I'll just say Sinatra because he was such a legend and still he's. He had the vocal instrument, not the temperament necessarily. For a clear classroom is certainly had to all musical instincts and things. That wasn't what he wanted to do, so he didn't pursue that. But he certainly had that. A lot of singers did, phrases were longer, so all of those so important to what my ear grew accustomed to and that I fell in love with, so it was you couldn't have grown up in that time I don't think. I do mean grown up during when I was an adolescent self-worth and just jumped from hearing that into something that's abrasive as you will hear today. I can't unless I just turn off all the vocal beauty things that I grew up with. I can't get my mind into some of their barking scene and I enjoyed that on another primitive level. I'm very wide open in terms of my taste sight. Because I grew up playing a little bit of jazz and I loved the hillbilly and all of that, plus all the, every plastic I've done pieces that are just don't have a key. They're just all over the place, and I enjoyed the stimulation of that. I'm not squared about the whole that at all. But I just grew up with that long run beautiful stuff, and it really shaped my own. Well, that's shaped everybody. [LAUGHTER]
[00:57:54] Leslie Guinn: Pop music, that's a big element now. One of my peeves was, I just learnt so now because I have been so filled with this other, but was I loved and grew up hearing nothing miked in the theater. If it's an opera or musical theater thing, Oklahoma carousel, any of those [inaudible 00:58:22] things I grew up with. If you hearing those people. If there was a mic get some little thing like I had in junior high school with a little piece of a little tiny mic on the floor. That time everything was big then but it wasn't good. The floor lights, the bank of the floor there was no amplification really. The people who's saying all of this, had to have the same sort of vocal technique because people have to do an opera. When it became amplified as everything is now, you lose the individuality of the voices. That's just always been an enormous turn on for me. I've had students in musical theater who've gotten their wonderful careers on Broadway and [NOISE] all kinds of stuff. I've heard them. It sends me at times because I will hear them in a role, let's say like, or Show Boat. Do you know the show Show Boat? Old Man River, you ever heard of that? That's a big piece to the, oh, they're just number of pieces. Anyway I heard him in Chicago doing Show Boat. Beautiful and unique quality to his voice. But it was all obliterated, homogenized, I should say, with all of the incredibly expensive and good miking stuff. I've never had to deal with that except for outdoor concerts. Even if you're doing a big classical piece and it's outdoors with few thousand people out there sitting on grass, you wouldn't be heard, there's no way to do without. But I have no idea what I'd sound like or anybody else. It's a delayed thing. But in theater of course, different. But that's a big peeve of mine in terms of enjoyment. I understand why it's there and all the good things it's brought. I have another former student who went into conducting finally and he's done everything. I've certainly seen his work and heard him talk about Donald Hill get into town. He'll have eight or 10 piece orchestra, but a big keyboard that's electrified to the hilt. It sounds like a lot that it isn't quite. They've a lot of sound checks that mean, they've worked for days on the electronic stuff. The other thing that I think we've lost is the androgynous sound that is out there now for men. In the early days of musical theater, you had to have your voice developed so that it amplified itself. That's going to be a sturdy, pretty big sound just in order to be heard. It was clearly what it was. Nowadays, the music that's being written and it's been something that's evolved. Now instead of saying Barrett one or 10 or a base, or somebody, they will say Barrett tenor or something like that. Tenor bear. Michael Jackson seemed to be the first one who really sort came, you couldn't tell what was going on in that. I'd like to hear more clarity, none of a gender or any of that. I could care less. But the sound has got to be more interesting. Even the guys who sings things like Show Boat and so forth. Nowadays, it's going to be a whoosy sound. It doesn't have that dig in. I just not turned on by that. But all the music today in order for these guys to work, as I said, students are doing very well and [NOISE] they're doing it in a healthy way with their voices heard. You're hearing about a third of what, not in volume just but in quality of sound and type of sound. It's just all a neutralized or notarized almost because the gender is almost being done away with in terms of the quality of the sound. I know people in the business who don't like it either, but that's the way it is. They don't write. They don't write shows that required. If you heard of South Pacific. Some Enchanted Evening. Does that mean anything to you? Some Enchanted Evening, you've never heard that. Oh, well, there goes that illustration [LAUGHTER]. The guy that did the roll on Broadway was a huge Metropolitan Opera star. [inaudible 01:03:28] unbelievable voice and beauty. Well, you couldn't do that today with the sound that some of the kids have to use in order to work in other things. It's a self-fulfilling and it's fine. It's just not something I get my kick out of.
[01:03:53] INTERVIEWER: Did the music have any particular dances associated with it?
[01:03:57] Leslie Guinn: Dances? Music in general? Yes. You'd have to talk with my wife about that. She was in ballet. Somebody's talking with her in this project. But [NOISE] fortunately, I don't dance. I can't. I've tried. I do clumsy box step, I guess it. Something I rather did at my daughter's wedding. But that's just not a gift that I have. I've never had to participate that way. I'm envious of those who can do that, and I'm just wired in some other way. There are a lot of a lot of [NOISE] walses and jigs and things like that that I'm not sure that I know what you mean by that. Ask me the question again would you.
[01:04:51] INTERVIEWER: Did music have any particular dances associated with?
[01:04:54] Leslie Guinn: By music you mean just music?
[01:04:57] INTERVIEWER: Music that was popular.
[01:04:59] Leslie Guinn: Oh, excuse me. No. Only as it occurred within context of something rather. But it wasn't. Not that I'm aware of. [inaudible 01:05:09] and things like that that they had a lot of [NOISE]. But again, because I wasn't a dancer, that really didn't have much effect on me, but I just didn't. Thinking about the music that I really enjoyed usually were the balance. That's just the way I'm wired. I just went with that. We all do whatever it is we've pulled toward. But I wouldn't. I think it's probably related to the singing aspect. If you're seeing something that's, that's very, well, where there's not a moment in there where you can hear the quality of sound that I like to hear.
[01:05:58] INTERVIEWER: What were the popular clothing or hairstyles at the time?
[01:06:00] Leslie Guinn: [LAUGHTER] Oh, boy. Hairstyles for women I would know if I were looking. Clothing [NOISE], are you speaking now of after college, during college, not in high school necessarily or are you?
[01:06:20] INTERVIEWER: Are you going to be all right?
[01:06:21] Leslie Guinn: Excuse me.
[01:06:23] INTERVIEWER: You're good?
[01:06:23] Leslie Guinn: Oh, I'm hearing it. I mean to me it's like sitting in my living room.
[01:06:26] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[01:06:26] Leslie Guinn: Okay.
[01:06:26] INTERVIEWER: Awesome.
[01:06:35] Leslie Guinn: What was it about clothing or what? I'm sorry. Hairstyles. Clothing and hairstyle. Men, short hair in the '50s, early '60s, I think. [NOISE] For women, it's more classical, more tailored. I had the wonderful exposure of working in the stockroom, but in a different level than that might imply for a very famous dress designer in New York City. Same as [inaudible 01:07:06] looks like main Barker. He designed closes for the Duchess of Windsor, for the Rockefeller's, you name it. He did it. But if you said you wanted to have something from him, first of all [NOISE], his office staff would have their accountants do a check-up on your husband and in those days, you would have had a husband for all that. On his credit status, and it was called something as the Dun and Bradstreet report or something. Then if that was up, then you would go in, and he put somebody else. We take minute measurements of you. If you were to go up in the upper regions of his building, there would be mannequins to the nth degree of all of these famous people, of their movie stars, everything. His clothing, was on the cover of Life magazine. He designed the Girl Scout uniform. He designed the Eisenhower jacket just as service things. His clientele [NOISE] they just didn't want for anything, hiring. All these names wouldn't be anything too. So I got to watch some of these stuff being created because he sponsored me that year. I had sung an audition in Chicago as my senior year and had made plans to study with someone in New York. One of the judges at the audition asked to see me after because they'll see my application. He said, because the man I was going to study with was a friend of his. I didn't know any of these people. He said, Well, what are you doing for work there or do you need a job? Yes, I sure did. He said. I may be able to get you, so he got in touch with Mr. O'Shea who then paid me basically to do nothing. I just hung around the stockroom. Once in a while, would deliver a dress to someone at the Pierre Hotel or something like that, or he would give me tickets to some big gala event of a concert that not only could I not afforded, I didn't even know what was going on because it was so out of my reach. If he couldn't go, he would call me and I would get to. Things that were just out of sight in terms of expensive were fundraisers. I spent a year watching this clothing being designed, and I watched some other preseason shows. I just worked there for one year and I made $55 a week. That was before taxes. It was wonderful experience. It was an insight into lots of things about clothing that I just really enjoyed. I know I wouldn't know what they're doing, but it was just fun not just to rub shoulders, but to see those things come from nothing. [BACKGROUND]
[01:10:31] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:10:31] [LAUGHTER] the first part, we're going to be talking about your youth still.
[01:10:31] Leslie Guinn: Not kindergarten or something.
[01:10:33] INTERVIEWER: No more like [BACKGROUND] the culture and also like your activities and stuff.
[01:10:44] Leslie Guinn: Just so I know before I start rambling about [NOISE] excuse me, a high-school, or post high school, or college?
[01:10:53] INTERVIEWER: You used your young life [OVERLAPPING]
[01:10:55] Leslie Guinn: Excuse me.
[01:10:55] INTERVIEWER: Your young life. Your teenage [OVERLAPPING]
[01:10:59] Leslie Guinn: Everything is young to me now. I'm learning mercy.
[01:11:04] INTERVIEWER: Probably around high school?
[01:11:08] Leslie Guinn: Okay.
[01:11:11] INTERVIEWER: Then also, you could call for a break at anytime that you want one. You can decline to answer any question or terminate the interview at any time for any reason.
[01:11:22] Leslie Guinn: Okay.
[01:11:23] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other fads or styles from your youth?
[01:11:27] Leslie Guinn: Well, Presley was a big deal and so blue suede shoes, blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up. Boys wore short-sleeved shirts with the cuffs rolled up. Those people who smoked, not in high school, but there were people, should have been in high school, they weren't, and they always rolled them up in their t-shirt, twisted around, they have a pocket on. Those are immediate things that popped in my head and I have no idea why. Styles, I think that was a little bit of the zoot suit and all that stuff was a little earlier, but I remember hearing about it. We're getting more and more conservative, and probably at that point because it was high school from 49-53. The war's end and Eisenhower and all of the conformity, I don't mean that in a negative way either, it just was. Double-breasted suits, I don't know about architectural styles. I don't remember. I would recognize, but [NOISE] I don't know how to label all those. Food was pretty simple, at least in my hometown, it was. A local coffee shop and things like that. Everybody wore khakis, especially the grown men. That was just a uniform for work in the oil field or just work if you worked at a local auto supply store, if there was one. Just a little town, there were stories, I did a lot of different things. I didn't see anything so adventuresome about car styles certainly began to change. Because all the big fins and things that came along and Cadillac, and Buics, and Chrome, lots of Chrome. That was of interest to me because I was a teenage boy. I don't know about styles, just grew through it. It was all gradual. I don't remember people being shocked by something. Probably one of the things that probably [NOISE] for women. Different styles. But that would have been rallies I got out of college. Sorry, I'm talking in a circle here, but he'd become even more conservative later. I can't think of any big things other than cars, and airplanes, and all of that was just burgeoning where you could. When I was first in college, for instance, right after high school or when I first went to college, just my very first visit to go. Because in those days, it wasn't easy to go look something over. You just made a commitment and went, that's where he worked. Because for me, it was all the way from Houston to Chicago and [NOISE] I guess people didn't have the time to do that and [NOISE] travel was changing a lot. You took a 24-hour train ride instead of a few hours on an airplane. You could do that, but not very frequent flights and very expensive for just the average, whatever. If I were looking through a Life magazine or something like that, probably. But everything was just about when I was in high school to really start popping up. When I was thinking magazine just then, and I thought about all things Playboy because I was living in evidence and right outside of Chicago when I think it made its debut. I will be on a sophomore or something in college. I think his first headquarters were in Chicago. There's a huge amount of publicity. Well, that was a shocker. Just a shocker to society that did a magazine like that has prim, as it was in those days compared to where it would be today, let's say. All of that, there's so much that came together there. I'm not a philosopher or sociologist, so I don't know how to put that all together, but boy, there were some real changes just beginning. Those things, of course, take time. But if there are specific things then I'd be happy to, maybe it'll jog my memory about it. [NOISE]
[01:16:08] INTERVIEWER: Were there slang terms, or phrases, or words that were used then that are common today?
[01:16:18] Leslie Guinn: Probably. [LAUGHTER] But I don't remember. I know what you're getting at, but I swear I don't remember. I remember it turns way before me. That came from my dad, but that was old folksy stuff, not what you're talking about. I don't think I was ever too much into that. It seemed corny even then, and that's corny.
[01:16:51] INTERVIEWER: What a typical day like for you when you were [inaudible 01:16:54]?
[01:16:56] Leslie Guinn: That would be, say high school? Well, I lived as I mentioned, one of the other times very close to the high-school, so getting to school was easy, five-minute walk. Everything that we did was right there in that main band, that building, except for the band building, which was off just across part of the campus, if you can call it on campus. We had a small truck, a small stadium, and this band room. But all the classes were in the one building, so I was there and then the band room, was just a little stretch across the lawns. That's where I, because of that music I was there, playing trumpet every day and then after school, marching band for even outside of football season, which we were always involved in. I don't want to make a big deal of this. There's only 100 kids in my senior class, so this is a 400 kid high school. That's not a big deal, four grades. [BACKGROUND] I think we did a lot of parades and do dance like that, so a lot of time in that building. [BACKGROUND]
[01:18:16] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:18:16] [BACKGROUND]
[01:18:16] Leslie Guinn: [LAUGHTER] No, I'm just teasing. I feel like I'm being attacked by the microphone. No, it's fine. It'll be a good short story. I don't know what we were doing just know.
[01:18:32] INTERVIEWER: You were telling me what a typical day for you was like in high school.
[01:18:34] Leslie Guinn: Oh, yeah. Basically go to school, go to class, whatever those classes were and basically, I've said before I enjoyed school a lot. I spent my day in classes and I did a little bit of sports stuff. We all had to take Phys Ed. I played a little bit of low-level basketball or something. That time I didn't have time for that because I was in the marching band and the concert band, and in the concert choir and so music took up quite a bit of my time. I did all these other little things we all do, yearbook and that sort of stuff. That was a typical day and I could've run home, I guess, to have lunch, we leaved so close. I don't believe we ever did that, but it was really handy I must say. Especially if there were something right after school, I would have time to go home, change clothes. If I were bused in say from some of the rural areas which certainly existed around there. Those kids had to plan for a full day when they walked out the door. We have no cafeteria, modest library. There would be some a little food truck outside with chili dogs and stuff like that. Sounds pretty good. That was a typical day, was nothing dramatic. [NOISE] Then I had listed many of us part-time work some days after schools and on weekends. It was not unusual for most of us guys. I don't think girls did very much, but guys did. Just was in those days.
[01:20:18] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun during that period?
[01:20:22] Leslie Guinn: Hung out with the girls. [LAUGHTER] Oh boy, we played, we just did everything. We played a little bit of tennis. We daydreamed about, I mean the guys, what we wanted to do when we got out of school. Things were so unplanned, at least in my little town by people, all the people I hanged around with who were not all into music and not all whatever I was into it. I forgot what I was going to say. I'm sorry. Oh, we didn't worry about things like SATs and SATs they didn't exist. We didn't worry about could we get into a school? Somebody would have guided us, but I [NOISE] don't think we had a counselor. You had teachers who took an interest and they would know something because they'd been somewhere to a teachers college or maybe advanced degrees and something, but not too much so it wasn't easy. We didn't spend a lot of time wondering if or when or where. We just let someone guide us. Certainly in my case, because I didn't know what musical opportunities that might be out there and that's what I did in it. For me, it worked out very well because I told you this story before, about this guy [NOISE] down here. For fun. This is something that I think fondly on because it's all so innocent and safe. We had something called the Friday Night Club. I know how hokey all this is. But it was a great opportunity for, I don't know, maybe a dozen or so of us to get together [NOISE] most Fridays at somebody's house and nobody drank in those days. None of that was any consideration. It wasn't of interest. I don't know why, but it wasn't. We would go and somebody's mother would have made cookies or cake or something and we would dance. They would turn the lights down in the living room and put something on, a 45 record player or 33. I think we were done with 78 by then. Those numbers mean anything to you, your folks can tell you. Or there folks? [NOISE] We were just dancing. What it did was give us an opportunity when I thought back about it, to hang out with a whole bunch of people that you weren't romantically interested in necessarily, might grow into that or something, but you just had a chance to talk guys and girls that you normally wouldn't necessarily spend that time or you don't have time during the day anyway. We were all a little nucleus of friends closer than with some other people. Then there were people who just didn't quite fit the group. It wasn't a matter of being excluded. It was more matter, I think of they're not preferring to be around this concentrated group. I don't think we were that sophisticated to have all of the [inaudible 01:23:39] already you can't do this or you don't belong here, something that just didn't occur. That was a very easy welcoming way to get to know people and it was healthy. Perfect. This is not utopia, I'm describing at all. [NOISE]
[01:24:03] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:24:03] were there any special days, events or family traditions in addition to that that you remember from this time?
[01:24:08] Leslie Guinn: Not family traditions. I mentioned once my family, we were small I mean, three of us. There is no big tradition. I mean, they just weren't into that. Well, we celebrate Christmas, Easter, all those things, but celebrating was not much of a deal. Christmas, we would usually go to my mother's mother's place, which was a couple of hundred miles away, and spend a few days there and everybody would exchange presents and stuff. But it wasn't as though there was a certain time or a certain thing that was done by everybody. It just wasn't that way for their family. My dad's family was really scattered and one parent was in pretty bad health and very aged and the other parent had died much earlier. We just didn't have that. Not much tradition. We have a lot in my family now I think but didn't and that's because of my mother, sorry for you, she my wife is very much into that and she is responsible for what we do. But not known under traditions.
[01:25:31] INTERVIEWER: Did your family have any special sayings or expressions during this time?
[01:25:38] Leslie Guinn: Probably. Oh my gosh. I just think of things my dad would have said or people. But this is not a family thing at all. I said I was called baby boy for a long time and affectionately way beyond my early childhood. There may have been there and I bet I don't remember it. I didn't have anyone to, because I think maybe being an only child, it's not as though I had any other siblings to just bat that stuff around and use it would be used with my family if at all and I don't remember. [NOISE] Can't go anywhere with that.
[01:26:40] INTERVIEWER: Were there any changes in your family life during the school years?
[01:26:43] Leslie Guinn: During the school years, those years?
[01:26:53] Leslie Guinn: But I can't talk about so that will just assume that egg and not be settled. It's not horrendous, but it was a change for a few years there that we worked with. I'd have to say way more than anybody is interested in even so.
[01:27:15] INTERVIEWER: Is this also really similar have question before actually the same [LAUGHTER] Were there any special days, events or family traditions you remember?
[01:27:27] Leslie Guinn: No. It sounds like a horrible childhood. Doesn't know tradition gathering stuff, but it wasn't like that at all. It was just what it was and he grew up from the beginning like that and so you're just comfortable. When I think back I don't remember. Maybe I just wasn't that acquainted with him, but very many people in my high school who came from huge families either large four or five, there were a lot of twos and threes and some one's wasn't as unusual as I might have thought. Whereas in my generation before, it was not uncommon to have 5-9 kids. That growing up at that particular time. Then with a war starting in 39, I guess. I was only four years old at that time, so that it had something to do with families and getting together and rationing and all that stuff.
[01:28:38] INTERVIEWER: We're going to break through that. Which holidays did your family celebrate and how were they traditionally celebrated and how is your family created its own traditions?
[01:28:50] Leslie Guinn: When you say family, you're talking about my childhood family? Oh, we didn't have traditions. That's what I'm sorry that I keep coming back to because I understand why you're asking except for the big deals like Christmas and Easter or something like that. At least this I remember when I got older, the schools would have whatever they had for July 4th, this or that, and a little tiny parades and in this little town I grew up in there, would it be something called a frontier days and population was by then maybe 3,500 or something like that. There would be people on horseback and wagons going around. This was the county seat so there was a big Courthouse Square in this little town and it still is the county seat. The square is still there. It's been remodeled, but people would just supposed to grow a beard. The men weren't supposed to shave for some a weeks or months or something like I don't know that but that's the thing they did occasionally. I was way too cool for that. When I was in high school, we weren't couldn't have cared less about that. I think we cared if our our parents, my dad didn't shave for whatever reason, he couldn't have cared less about that and I was too young to ask him why. But there were some men that they were just dragged out of their cars and dumped them in a tank or something if they hadn't shaved? They didn't tell me. I have no idea. I was worried for my daddy as it were. I was probably 10 or 12 years old. I remember the war, the blackouts, those things we did as children, not so much in high school, but before that, having a wagon, their buddy and I had that we would take coffee turns and cut in a way that we can nail them to the front and then there's some inner candle in there during blackouts and then cover up most of their. It was just boys playing stuff that's stuck in there because it was such a dramatic time in the world. But there was no high school, but no traditions.
[01:31:08] INTERVIEWER: Have any rescues then preserved and passed down with your family? Families are just connected abberation, especially.
[01:31:18] Leslie Guinn: My mother was a fabulous cook and she just did it all by touch, taste, feel, all of that. She was just Southern Texas, fresh vegetables would be squashing and things like that. But bread, I mean, she made her recipe for making dough. You could make into cinnamon rolls or dinner rolls or whatever you wanted to do. I loved them, but not only that mirror, areola, Mary Ellen, my wife, has a fabulous cook and she she's more educated about it, but she just distends and all you know and I remember she asked my mother she would call her when she was trying to make something early in our marriage. And the children are very young. And it was probably about the brand. My mother and said. Well, marry and you just you just put a couple of handfuls of this and a pinch of this, do whatever it was and it works for her. It worked and finally worked for Mary Ellen. I'm very own saved or print or Tai Hen wrote a lot of those recipes and pass them on to a tradition. Hey, there was one, but that's from it sort of handed up. That's later on. But it's duress a piece that our children have in handwritten form, not from my mother, but from my mother's conversations and with nothing from my grandmother, though she was a cook. But this is all just rough and ready Texas cooking. Chicken fried steak and vendors and roast and fried whatever and fresh tomatoes and catalogs, things like that. That was a lot of beans and peas were made with ham hock and they all had flavoring. Was nobody talked about cardiovascular and nobody could spell it or say it. Nobody cared and I'm not saying that's good, but it sure made life less stressful. [LAUGHTER] Attack, I guess. But no, we didn't. Those are the few things, some of those recipes and I really treasure that my wife did those things for the kids and for our grandchildren, excuse me, because they mean different things to different generations. But I don't think of other traditions. I have memories of things but not a tradition or anything like that.
[01:34:05] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back on your school years, what important social or historical events were taking place at that time, and how did they personally affect you and your family?
[01:34:13] Leslie Guinn: Are we now speaking K through 12? Because what it was, just the prominent thing there. That strung itself out because we had [NOISE] German or Japanese, the Hiroshima, all of the turmoil that came from that, everything that happened with all the veterans coming home, all the housing things, the education grants that were given routinely, thank goodness, it just overshadowed everything. Literally did. Not by wringing of hands, it just changed society. Not just the horrors of that, but the reparations that were being done in reworking that had to be done here in the States. Well, just like the VA benefits for instance. There were so many men who were ripped away and drafted at age 18, and got back three or four years later having gone through things very few people in there ever will in their lives have to endure or look out or be exposed to in some way. Then they've got to go back and go to school with 18-year-olds. They're 50 years old in experience in comparison to the average 18-year-old. Their education was pretty much paid for, I think. I certainly don't know anything about that in terms of accuracy effects, but I know that was a big thrust of all that and medical benefits and things like that. PTSD, that didn't exist in terms. It certainly did in effect, but not in terms then. That was the big thing, and the wonderful, at least for me, safety, and comfort that everybody felt the war was over, and we had security, and you could walk, and I did walk all around New York in middle of the night through Central Park by myself, never had a problem. Or it could have been. It was stupid of me, but I've only found that out later but you didn't read about things. Then they happen some but nothing like that. But that was that. I don't have anything could compete with that by having an effect on people. Hope it never just again. Did I answer your question? I don't remember if there's another part to it or something.
[01:37:00] INTERVIEWER: Well, if you could talk more about how that personally affected you, and what impacts it had on you?
[01:37:04] Leslie Guinn: I did miss it. Will I get the last part?
[01:37:07] INTERVIEWER: How it personally affected you, and what impacts those effects had on you?
[01:37:12] Leslie Guinn: Well, it affected me by giving me a peace of mind. I didn't have to worry for a long time about being drafted. The draft was doing. I did get drafted ultimately, but not until I'd been out of school. I didn't get drafted because I was in school. Then I was drafted about two years after I got out of school. Just a year-and-a-half before I would have been too old to be drafted. I think you could be drafted between, I believe it was 18 and 25. I was 24, 23 and 1/2 or something like that when I got drafted. But I had this peace of mind of being able to pursue my career. I didn't have any obligations to anybody, I was just a single guy just as excited as all get out to be starting my life in New York, and in a field that I just loved, felt I had some affinity for. It affected me in that it gave me peace of mind. If you want me to go ahead, when I was drafted, I was touring with a Broadway show then, and it took them a while to find me because my mail had being forwarded from one temporary location to another. I didn't know any of that, and we were on a tour for six months, just went over 100 towns. When it finally found me, I had just a week maybe to report, and well, I couldn't do that because the company had to find somebody to replace me. I didn't have a big role, but I had a bunch of small roles, and you have to train people. You find them, but you got to get them comfortable with the show. I managed to get a I guess, not a deferment, postpone, whatever they call it, so I got an extra eight weeks or four weeks or something. Then I left that and went into the army, and just went right from there home, and after they replaced me, and [NOISE] went into Houston, and reported, took my physical, and went in. Then went into basic training in Arkansas, and then went to Washington where I spent my whole four years. I was in for four years, and three months. That was just a God sent. The only reason I knew about it was when I was at Northwestern, [NOISE] one of my housemates was an older graduate student who had gotten drafted. He was also a senior, and he said if you ever get drafted because everybody thought they were going to be anyway, and I was too young then, but if you ever get drafted, be sure you get in touch with, and he gave me the name of the organization, the United States Army Chorus, Arlington, Virginia. I'd never forgot that guy. God only knows why, because I'd never thought about the army or anything. When I got drafted, I had time. That's what this was. I had time I would break in between when I got the draft and then had to report as I was saying. While I was still touring while they were training someone, we were playing in Baltimore, and I took the train one day, and went over to Arlington after setting it up, auditioned for this group. There are about 30 of us in it, and all people like me who would have professional training, some of us had management, all things like that. But you're in the army, you don't call any shots. I was accepted by them, had to take an audition, had to sight read, we interviewed, then just sing some things for them. [NOISE] That meant that when I reported, once I finished my basic training, which was 12 weeks or 10 weeks in Arkansas, then I was sent to Washington instead of what they had me down for a clerical type of school in Georgia. I spent my whole three years except for basic training in the army singing. That was again, there were people that we didn't live on base because they didn't have facility, so we lived in apartments all around Georgetown, Fairfax, all those places that we found for ourselves. They gave us a meager housing allowance. We just had a huge amount of free time. We had to be there when they call, it didn't matter what conflicted with you, and maybe set up. But we did. Gosh, it's several others singing with the National Symphony, as a soloist, go in, and do concert, as a soloist with the Symphony, and then we'll report for the course gig the next morning somewhere, and [NOISE] study voice while I was there. People were getting advanced degrees at Catholic University. It was just wonderful. We had part-time jobs. I sold memberships to some country club over the phone. We just all did whatever because we weren't getting paid anything. I mean, it was pitiful but better so if you're alone, and you share a place with somebody, and then you're off and running. But that was a Godsend because I managed during that. Well, I got married while I was in there actually. I had met my wife before I was drafted, and it was in summer stock, I think we told you that earlier on, I'm not sure but met. Then when I was on tour, I saw her again when she was visiting her sister after she had injured herself in Russia. Then we just stayed in touch and got married. Here we are today, it's 56 almost years later. But the army, that was fabulous. Saying it, I was president's soloists at his church, this was Eisenhower, went to the White House for dinner with the president of the United States. How many people couldn't get. I'm just a country boy, Good God, and to get to do that, it still blows my head off that we got to do that. The choir, and the core solo quartet were asked to come and be there for a little concert after for some dignitary. But the four of us, the four soloists, gave a concert for all these guests. The core choir were somewhere else, and the four of us were invited to this state dinner. The choir, they were treated very well, but luckily, we stood in the receiving line with the president, met all of these real movers, and shakers in Washington. It was head-spinning stuff too. I was in there, I rented white dinner jacket and my old beat-up car, and yet here we are. Then after standing around chatting with the president in this room, I think I may have told you about that. Holy Moses, that's just an experience of a lifetime. You can appreciate who Eisenhower was then, but he was a piece. He still is, and was a big deal, not just as president but supreme commander. That was that. Where am I supposed to go from there?
[01:44:34] INTERVIEWER: Where you lived after high school. [LAUGHTER].
[01:44:36] Leslie Guinn: Oh, really? Well after high school, I was right into Evanston, and from Evanston, right into Manhattan, and from Manhattan to the road. I was on the road for six months, and then into the army. Then I just stayed in the Washington area. I lived in a few different places there, but in the Washington area, and got married about less than a year before I left the army, and then we moved into Princeton for a short while, and then into Queens, and moved around the Manhattan area, and then back, but moved out here in '71.
[01:45:19] INTERVIEWER: How did you come to live in Evanston?
[01:45:23] Leslie Guinn: Just because of going to school. I didn't know Evanston from anything. That's just where I was told I'd get a good education and scholarship. It's crazy. I think I told you guys my tuition, my freshman year was $400. That's pretty good price for it in Northwestern. That's breakfast at the local [LAUGHTER] Denny's I think nowadays. But I loved having that, and the center is very good. It's great for me. Quiet, safe. Again, I'm just a little bit of a country bumpkin in a certain way, not the way I express myself, but I didn't have many experiences. You've got them.
[01:46:13] INTERVIEWER: Well, you already said that you moved around through your adult working life, what were the reasons for those movements?
[01:46:19] Leslie Guinn: Well, what I just spoke about with touring and then being drafted and then going into Manhattan to get started, you just had to be there. Notice these things have changed in the entertainment industry. I'm not talking about pop music at all. My whole thing to cluster. In those days, there were very few opera houses, there were very few in comparison to what we now have. Not so many regional symphony orchestras where there was always the Chicago in New York Philharmonic and Silver, but not the regional things that offered so much opportunity. Management was not as easy to come by. Not that it's easy, but it was a little bit rarer to find to make a go of it there. We stayed in Queens and then Westchester because we were offered a chance to move into a house instead of a duplex and our kids were young enough we wanted to be the quieter, hairy of White Plains. We were both of us, Texas, Mississippi, that sort of thing. Not so aggressively East Coast. I lived and work there but it's just we were not wanting the stress of raising our kids there. Then while I was singing here with the Philadelphia Orchestra, I was asked if I'd be interested in coming to join here, faculty, interview for it, and I did, and that's when we moved here in '71, and that was great. Our kids went to school here, different ages and I haven't regretted. It still good. It's a wonderful town to live in I have to say. Do I need to shut down?
[01:48:09] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] No I'm sorry, I'm looking for a script.
[01:48:12] Leslie Guinn: No, that's all right.
[01:48:22] INTERVIEWER: Where and when did you and your spouse first meet?
[01:48:25] Leslie Guinn: We met in the summer of 1958 in Hyannis, Massachusetts at the Cape Cod Melody territory. I was singing in the chorus for whatever show Guys and Dolls or some any number of things, and it was a big part too and she, I've probably told you, she had danced there in solo roles in the past. Came back from a year off where she was taking care of her mom who was terminally ill. The day before she drove up just to say hi to the choreographer and some of the dancers on her way up the coast of Maine to see her uncles, one of the dancers in our company had a bike accident and the concussion. They couldn't get anyone out of Manhattan quickly enough to open the show and there on we had where she could just do anything with dance, that's what she's supposed to do. They just solved it, she said just yanked out of the car [LAUGHTER] because they knew her, she was a known entity and it worked out. That gave us about three weeks or four of working together and getting to know each other in the easiest possible way. We found we had all these things in our background, both Texans, the oilfield background together, all of them. We just hit it off in that sense. Little spark going on here and there. No rush and and from there I went on this road to show and she went off some. Well, I'll let her tell her story. But that's how we met. We laugh and she mostly calls us a song and dance team, which is not the case. I don't dance and she doesn't sing. [LAUGHTER].
[01:50:21] INTERVIEWER: You're good. I love you. [LAUGHTER] [inaudible 01:50:28]
[01:50:28] INTERVIEWER: Five-minute video, we will ask some questions more than once. We can portray our best answers in the final produce. For all of your project, we want to focus on your career in music, your love story, and your love of travel.
[01:50:47] Leslie Guinn: Okay. My love of what? I missed it somehow.
[01:50:49] INTERVIEWER: Travel.
[01:50:50] Leslie Guinn: Travel. I thought you said cattle [LAUGHTER] and I go wait a minute. I did think you'd said that. I thought I know I couldn't have heard correctly. It's just if you just make it a little slower. It's not that, it is sometimes rushed then sometimes not, sometimes it's easy. But it's my problem. I realize that but it's becoming your problem. [LAUGHTER]
[01:51:10] INTERVIEWER: No. I also do talk really fast.
[01:51:15] Leslie Guinn: Yes, you do. [LAUGHTER] I used to do too.
[01:51:20] INTERVIEWER: For the first set of questions, we're going to focus on your upbringing and your inspiration for your life choices and also your musical interests. Can you describe the circumstances that were there when you were first discovered your love of music?
[01:51:37] Leslie Guinn: I can't because there was never a time. It just was a part of my existence, a part of my being and just that was just what I was. It really was, there were no conscious anything even in childhood, it's a little far back if you want to go. It was just something that really I was so aware of. It's been wonderful. [LAUGHTER] I can't imagine life without it being the central, just in terms of everything outside of the really deeper values of faith and norm and all that stuff. But boy too, I have been able to make my living doing this is unreal. It is what it is. It's the core driving thing for me.
[01:52:28] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe your first experiences with learning music?
[01:52:39] Leslie Guinn: I don't remember what they were. My instrument is a child, of course was my voice and ultimately became what I did. I first thought it was going to be a jazz trumpeter and I played trumpet when I was in upper grade school. Learning to read then had a lot to do with simple arithmetic, and it was never difficult time, it was snap for me. It's other things, but reading music was a gift that at least one line, which was all I needed for a trumpet and all I needed for voice. Later on I've got education, but at that time, I was just a piece of cake. I was grateful for that later on because it helped me a lot in learning things when I was really doing it for my livelihood.
[01:53:41] INTERVIEWER: Did you always know you're going to same [inaudible 01:53:42] ?
[01:53:44] Leslie Guinn: Well, not as a child because we don't know what our voices are at all, does the child? But I knew I somehow was always going toward music and I'm sure it's because of it's encouraged and constantly getting positive feedback, whatever little dinky thing I did, and so even though I was not a terrific trumpet player, my innate musicality, which is a gift, not an achievement, was just always getting me going and something in a lot of opportunities through that, but I wasn't so good at that. I knew I was going to go somewhere in that and when my voice changed, and I'd already been playing trumpet for two or three years, but then I will need it to leave the trumpets so I could devote more time to figure out how my voice work. Also because I didn't play the trumpet technically so well, I would get tense in my throat then I couldn't sing well, so I knew I had to figure all that out. Rather than correct the trumpet, I would rather learn how to sing and that was my bigger gift. You get that kind of feedback from people. I've always wanted to do that, it's incredibly liberating. [LAUGHTER] it really is?
[01:55:08] INTERVIEWER: What inspired you to go onto music, is there anyone?
[01:55:15] Leslie Guinn: Well, there's so many ways of looking at that. I said that was just my impetus music, the feedback I got just on a visceral level for music. But I was inspired by the constant feedback of people I admired who were in music. I'm not talking about famous people or teachers and so forth. I just had an affinity, but we had something going there, it was never discussed. It's just that I sensed some subliminal level of infinity there. I was just always inspired by that. I have absolutely no gift for math or science or any of those things and so I wasn't attracted toward the boy. With the people who were in music there was, I don t know, there's a sensitivity there within those levels that was just an incredible positive attraction for me. I don't know what else to say about it. Hadn't really tried to analyze it. But once in a while, I think back about the people I wanted to spend time with, teachers or colleagues or whatever it was and they were always. As a matter of fact, I remember walking in Vermont with a friend who was a singer also, and I was whistling something and we are always a singers we can't turn it off. We're analyzing everybody's voice even as they speak and especially if they're singers. I was whistling something, and he said, have you ever noticed that when people are whistle it often is a reflection of some of the basic qualities in their voice. I hadn't thought about it, but he was absolutely right. Those are really core things that manifest themselves. You can't get away from it. Being attracted to people and getting feedback and respecting what they had to say, because of their musicality.
[01:57:26] INTERVIEWER: What music inspired you and why?
[01:57:29] Leslie Guinn: What music?
[01:57:30] INTERVIEWER: Inspired you and why?
[01:57:31] Leslie Guinn: No, would you say what music? Country, western cowboy music, when I was a kid. I grew up with that, loved even then the more lyrical singers as hokey and boring as they are now, they were legendary and so I just was really turned on by that. Then just whatever was out there. I was never attracted to raucous music, but I've performed it. I'm intellectually get involved in a known contemporary composers and I'm not saying that's all raucous, but sometimes there are portions of it that are. [NOISE] That's all I'll say about that.
[01:58:19] INTERVIEWER: We recall you grew up during the white.
[01:58:22] Leslie Guinn: Wait a minute, say it again.
[01:58:23] INTERVIEWER: We recall you grew up during the white.
[01:58:24] Leslie Guinn: Yes.
[01:58:25] INTERVIEWER: How did growing up during that time period impact your relationship with the people around you?
[01:58:32] Leslie Guinn: You just say impact? We all were very patriotic. I was born in 35, so the war ended in 45. He said it wasn't as though it's an adolescent to where I had different kinds of things going on. Everything was black and white. All the slang terms that were used for enemies, that's the way we spoke of them and that's what we felt about them. We were not encouraged and I'm just talking about the general public to think of them as compassionate people. They were the enemy, we were the victors or going to be and we were right, they weren't, so that had a huge impact on judgments for a long time. It took some growing up and thinking in every way you can think to grow out of that. It was also a very binding experience among all neighbors and families usually. I had an uncle who was in the Navy and another uncle by marriage who was in some other portion of the Navy. I was just gung-ho, so that had a lot to do with my sense of what was right and what was wrong, whether that's correct or not. That had to be modified many times as I was growing up. But [NOISE] because there was not a lot of wishy-washy factor to our thinking, we just did it. We just say it was black and white. Have said that but it's true it was a very right and wrong period. Then it was comfortable as a child the security of never doubting good and should we have done that or not? I didn't know anything about what was really going on. Just if they did something, the right guys, they were needed to be punished for it. I'm not speaking as I think now, I'm just telling you. It had a lot. What also, I remember that there was rationing of coupons and things for use, getting oil and gasoline and things like that, and people were encourage to grow little gardens. Some of that was such an impact, where I grew up in a very tiny town in Texas as opposed to a city Philadelphia in Manhattan or something that, where so-called Victory Garden that was very important. It may eat, how would I know? But that was just what happened around whoever we worked. But I also grew up in one of the richest, meaning in terms of resources in the ground, petroleum areas in the United States, near Houston and that whole area there. To be told, you couldn't have enough gasoline, you couldn't drive any more miles and this. Well, is a strange thing, I couldn't get my head wrapped around that. It was in those days you could drive out into the oil fuel and turn a knob on a piece of pipe and crude oil, come pouring out into a jar for you, or even unrefined gasoline, or casing head gas and I've forgotten where that comes from. It is something to do with the drilling and where it is not as refined. There was a lot of borrowing of that gasoline because you didn't pay for it. You just run into the oil field and stole it out of a pipe somewhere. I didn't I couldn't drive, I was nine years old. When I said there was a very important time, it had huge impacts.
[02:02:28] INTERVIEWER: The second set of questions we're going to ask you to focus on your travels and meeting your wife.
[02:02:36] Leslie Guinn: Focused on my travel what.
[02:02:38] INTERVIEWER: And meeting your wife.
[02:02:39] Leslie Guinn: Meeting my wife. Let me just pause for a quick swallow. [inaudible 02:02:50] [LAUGHTER]
[02:02:55] INTERVIEWER: Do you recall your college years were very important in your life. Where did you go to college?
[02:02:59] Leslie Guinn: Northwestern University. That was terrific choice for me. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but we had a choral director in my little town of 3,000 people or so. Who is from the University of Minnesota had a master's degree there in choral conducting. We'd never had choir in high school, and so he was hired to come in and form a choir.That was important. He was a voice teacher. I started studying voice with him at age of 16, I guess. When it came time to finish up high school. He suggested Northwestern after giving it some thought because it had a very reputable music school. It's a very near major city called Chicago. We grew up in a tiny town, naive in so many ways I was, in someone's a talent for that matter. He felt like that would be a cocoon for me to learn in. A school of only six or 7,000 people then, as opposed to say, go into Manhattan to be a Juilliard, Eastern which is a larger unit. That was a terrific place to go for all reasons I heard Chicago Symphony as exposure. In I was naive. I heard my first big important concerts there as a kid. $0.50 a seat. If you can believe that an orchestra hall and downtown Chicago. That's bizarre when I think about it. I was very naive and hadn't just had to start from scratch and it worked. I was very protected in the sense of, wasn't a wild and wooly town. It was a dry town. There were no booze, which mattered knocked me down at all. That's the only education I had in a formal sense. I didn't do any graduate work. I was really anxious to get out and perform. When I graduated, that's what I did.
[02:05:11] INTERVIEWER: What did you major in and why?
[02:05:13] Leslie Guinn: [LAUGHTER] Well, mathematics and physics. I really haven't got it. No. I major in music. I got a degree in vocal performance, but within that has within the school now, you have to take a bunch of other things. I did it take languages in music theory, history, taking an astronomy course, and just out of curiosity about things, but why was all the stuff I've said from the beginning. It's just what makes me take. That was an incredible treat. I just thought I had died and gone to heaven or just surrounded by music and musical experts and everybody wants you to succeed in the classroom. I wasn't not a discipline student side. I didn't apply myself well, but I got through and that's pretty good school and I graduated. Not something to crow about my GPA is not something that hung onto, but it's all right. It's a little different. This time is very different and I couldn't have cared less about an advanced degree, and sometimes that's horrible and sometimes it's not so bad. That's what I majored in and that's why I don't want even wouldn't know how to begin to say why. I just only thing I could think of and the only thing I knew how to do, I would've been horrible. It's some other things, not sales for something I've done that to make a living and let me know. I do enjoy people, I love interacting and talking and all that. I know I could have done that, but it's not rewarded. I'm sure financially it's more rewarding, but pointer, the other things that matter were satisfied through music.
[02:07:07] INTERVIEWER: Do you you remember that you've traveled to many places. Can you list some places you've traveled?
[02:07:14] Leslie Guinn: Well, it was usually for work. Other than within the state, which was lots of travel to I just would you do you go off and you don't see it in wherever you live? That's the only thing because singing in New York where I live, that was there was plenty there, but I have sang in Europe. I started seeing now for extended periods, yes for six months at a time. A couple of times in strict garden on offer and then in bond, Cologne and some of those places. Traveling, but it was always for work. Even though when I was gone for a long time, my wife, Mary Ellen was with me. She's the one who's done the traveling because of being within Berlin and she'd already been to Russia, and I don't want to wear all. She would go with me when I was going to be there for more than a week or two. We traveled, I've been to Europe a bunch of times. Monte-carlo, which was fun. There was a different experience altogether. Wonderful orchestra. They're just terrific orchestra, and I had a wonderful colleague when I was there to do this. Mahler songs. I can tell you this is the thing that I love about spontaneity. I studied it for whole bunch of times, spent summer as the music festival, and maybe 15 summers. They're standing in the grocery store at the checkout line. One of the conductors whom I knew someone who had never worked with, but he'd heard me there, came up to me in the checkout line, and I said, "Oh hi, how are you doing?" We were chatting and he said," Have you ever done the mahler?" Kelvin some kindergarten later but anyway, a group of Mahler songs leader in fighting because alien, so right? No, that's not right either. I'm sorry. You can do this, right yeah:. So a Mahler cycle for two voices. I said "No, but I have enjoyed model" He said, "Well, why don't you come over to Monte-carlo, whatever it is and seeing them with me there? " And I said, "Oh my gosh, well, let me call my manager or have somebody call him, I'll take another look at the score. I was familiar with them but not had not performed before" But all of a sudden, you could doing one thing. Somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, come to Monte-Carlo in four months or whatever it was, and stay for ten days and will reverse and performing, and you get paid a bunch of money and you're doing just what you love to, it's just a real treat " That kind of thing was just present all the time in my life where it'd be when you're first starting out, it's struggling to make a living and then the phone would ring and off we would go or I would go and it may just be the Milwaukee or Los Angeles or something, but it was still the way it happened. Has this great management would call you mostly? Have forgotten what the correct question was. Actually but you will be pause.
[02:10:32] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 02:10:32] Take a lot of great. Yeah.
[02:10:45] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 02:10:45]
[02:10:46] Leslie Guinn: I bet again, I swear to God I keep [LAUGHTER] thinking. The minute I react, I know that what it is, but I can't stop it. Part of it is peripherally, this looks like the back of an upright piano, this piece of wood right here, and so that's what I'm not hearing gorgeous piano sound I know that and so it just all comes together. [NOISE] I'm a little [inaudible 02:11:11]. [LAUGHTER].
[02:11:17] INTERVIEWER: Really loud.
[02:11:17] Leslie Guinn: Paris for something and Mary Ellen and Rachel were sightseeing and they got in these sightseeing boats on the canals and things and she was robbed. From her purse they took, the way we think of it was the cash thing. We were in Paris and she had in her purse whatever amount she needed, substantial because there was nothing else you could do with your money, in her purse some German marks plus francs. I was off doing whatever I did that afternoon and somebody distracted her. She was trying to raise the, these were those dome boats you see and she was trying to get the window up. Somebody leaned forward and said, "May I help you?" Some guy. Her purse was beside. His partner, whoever that was, probably a woman because they work in Paris like that, while Mary Ellen and Rachel were distracted by this helpful gentleman, the wallet within her purse was taken. It was a hunk of money plus American Express card, driver's license, passport, all that stuff was lost and she didn't know it. They were stopping for lunch or early something while I was working and they got up to pay and she couldn't pay. [LAUGHTER] The woman, they were so polite. I don't know where she was, but they were very polite. She was shocked and dismayed, but somehow and I had my money on me.
[02:13:01] INTERVIEWER: What are your most prominent memories from performing in operas?
[02:13:06] Leslie Guinn: The most prominent memory [LAUGHTER] is when my pants split open. [LAUGHTER] It was in Hanover and I was doing Das Rheingold. In this production, the costume was all leather, heavy leather white, and the scene that my character opens in, I'm saying it was a prominent memory because it was just potentially horrible because once Wotan is on stage, he's basically on stage till the end of the opera so it's not as though you can go off and some seamstress can take 10 minutes and sew something. It was hot [inaudible 02:13:50] the costume was hot, all the lights, etc so I was drenched underneath the leather. Well, nothing slides. I open the opera or my part of the opera, perched up on a high table with one leg on the floor and the other on a stool like this so my rear end is up here somewhere, but the stress on the pants would have been nothing. I mean come, we've been rehearsing for weeks. The minute I did this and this is seconds before the curtain goes up, literally seconds, rip, and I felt a cool breeze coming right through. [LAUGHTER] I was so grateful for the breeze, but I thought, "Oh my God, I'm going to be on the stage forever now, what do I do?" Unfortunately, I had on top of the shirt and the leather pants and boots and all that a long, almost floor-length leather coat. It was less attractive in terms of the way the costume was, but nobody wants to look up at my underdrawers and all that stuff so I draped it across my legs in a way just for the curtain. Well, talk about distracting. That was our opening night for a brand new production it was Das Rheingold. I had a lot on my mind just remembering what all needed to be done. That's a very prominent memory because all night long, I had to be sure, and there were many other times with good bit of movement and wrestling with some people where I had to be careful. It just takes everybody's mind off the music when things like that happen. That's a prominent memory, not very glorious. I'm trying to think, I don't know, I mean, I had lots of moments of just sheer terror when I was first starting out when you're maybe there's some of it shows and some of it doesn't, but it's a little scary sometimes when you're not secure and when you first start, you don't have that kind of experience. Thank goodness, Das Rheingold, I've been singing for decades, so it wasn't just thrown completely out of the loop, but it didn't making my debut in a ring cycle very easy. There were moments that are just extremely thrilling within a performance where everything is working and you're singing and you don't know how you're singing, you don't know not the quality, the function because everything is so well-coordinated. When that happens, which is not routine, then that's a special sensation I have to say. But that split pants, that is a big memory of mine. That doesn't say much, does it for my musical highlights? [LAUGHTER] That's not true. There was a lot of those, but nothing jumps to my head right now. I'm sure there are some. Yes, wait a minute, I can tell you another. When I first came to the university in '71, I think it was '72 that I gave a faculty recital and it was all Schumann recital. In those days, it was often that when you end the evening, you did it with something robust and we were doing some gorgeous leader by Robert Schumann and I closed with a wonderful song called Main Churner Staring, and it's about a star, my beautiful star. It's a love song. It's just this long line, very lyrical. When I finished with that, after singing on stage with pianos for an hour and a half, I guess, it was such a wonderful feeling of closure and I loved the song and I loved the emotions expressed and the way I felt, and that's always been a very strong memory. It was a new experience in programming for me too. Still, I run into a few friends at faculty, friends that were there that talked, it is not about me and scenes just about that beautiful song and hearing it at that moment and it's not a big get-to-your-feet kind of thing. Those are sharp memory. Is probably not at all the only, there's some others because of the poetry or the text of Britain's war requiem has moments like that. There's lots and lots, but only one with the torn pants. [LAUGHTER] That'll stay with me. No photos. Unfortunately, they weren't taking, they did that in the dress rehearsal.
[02:18:44] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe the circumstances surrounding the first time you met your wife?
[02:18:50] Leslie Guinn: Yeah, sure. When we were looking at photos earlier, there was summer stock photos there. This is where we met both of us from Texas. Her past, we didn't know each other then. I was singing in Cape Cod at Melody tent. She had danced there in solo roles the summer before and I think the summer before that. Knew the choreographer. I was there all summer. She was driving through, I think I've told you this, but that's all right, driving through one of the dancers a few days before that had a bike accident, brain concussion, it was in the middle of the week and then the summer like that, you couldn't get somebody up there from Manhattan quickly enough that was familiar with all of this, she knew all this stuff like the back of her hand and she laughed and said the choreographer dragged out of the car and said can you hang around for a few weeks? She just spent a year taking care of her mother who was at terminal cancer in Houston. She needed to get a break after that period. She was on her way to Maine to visit her uncles, then just stopped over to say hello to the people she knew. That's how we met, just absolute happenstance in a rehearsal shortly after she got there and found out that we were both from Texas and we both had family in the oilfield business in one form or another. One thing led to the other and we got acquainted long distance over a cup. She went off to Russia with Ballet Theater and I got in the army and all that stuff. We just kept in touch for a good two years and then got married while I was still in the army at Fort Myers.
[02:20:43] INTERVIEWER: What was your first thought of your wife when you met her?
[02:20:48] Leslie Guinn: Beautiful body. [LAUGHTER] She was in tights dancing. She was a ballet, she was professional ballet. They all have just incredible bodies. I was 22 years old, give me a break. You can put it whatever you want, but that's the first thing I thought. Then when I got to speak with her a little bit, we had all of these other things. She was soft-spoken, gentle, very intelligent, compassionate, all these wonderful qualities that are so much more important, of course. Most guys, that's the first thing. It may be fleeting, but we were rehearsing for hours every day together. I had a chance to really get to know her. We went out for dinner a time or two in this little town there. Those days was not a big deal. It is now more. [LAUGHTER] We laughed about it. We've had some good jokes about all of that. You want candor, don't you? Can I have some more water? Thanks. That's the truth though, that's the first thing I responded to. Most straight males do that with, for whatever reason, not the same turn on, but it's what it is. That's what keeps us going.
[02:22:26] INTERVIEWER: Can you pull the curtains really quick? [BACKGROUND] [LAUGHTER]
[02:22:31] Leslie Guinn: Getting allergic?
[02:22:33] INTERVIEWER: What?
[02:22:33] Leslie Guinn: Are you getting allergic with the burning stuff going on out there? It seems a lot of people like that.
[02:22:38] INTERVIEWER: [BACKGROUND] The tissues are pretty low-key material. [LAUGHTER]
[02:22:46] Leslie Guinn: The other thing is that I can't dance at all and that's what she did. How we got together is a hoot?
[02:23:01] INTERVIEWER: How did you propose?
[02:23:04] Leslie Guinn: Have we talked about this? Because I thought it was unique. At that moment, she wasn't in Russia, she was in somewhere else, but it was the same tour with Ballet Theater. I was in the army in Washington, and in those days making a phone call to Europe was not simple. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't, but we wrote letters. It took two weeks to get them. But gradually over this period of time, we'd gotten to know each other very well and we were quite serious. I sent her a telegram and said, what is your attitude in ballet. Who here is at ballet? Somebody I thought had danced some. Maybe she's not here. There was everybody else here. Anyway, I said, what is your attitude, which in ballet is a posture, toward or to a positive. We all know that for two people. She knew exactly what I meant and I knew what I meant and that was how I proposed by telegram and got a positive response. Here we are 50 something years later. We were married in 61, so what is that? Be 57 in December. That's a long time. I will go on and on about our wonderful marriage, but I could.
[02:24:42] INTERVIEWER: Where and when did you get married?
[02:24:45] Leslie Guinn: In December 2nd, 1961 at Fort Myers, Virginia, army base there. I didn't live on the base, so I had my own place because it didn't have enough room for this organization I was with there. So we just got a modest housing allowance and we would usually buddy up with somebody in the Army Chorus. We were married in that. Well, this is just a little chapel, a small chapel on the base of every whatever religious group wanted. By then I was a Catholic. Mary Ellen was born a Catholic. The priest there was the chaplain, as it turned out. I got to know him, and long before that, and I become the ill-prepared choral director for this little volunteer choir of about 10 people. That's where we're in that little chapel with the Robert Joffrey Ballet people came down several of them because she'd done a lot of work with them. It was quite a nice day. We were married about 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning and went to Watergate for our brunch following, but not the Watergate we all know now that's famous. This was just a wonderful restaurant on the water, the Potomac there. That's where we had just a terrific time with family and so forth. [LAUGHTER]
[02:26:21] INTERVIEWER: The last set of questions we're going to ask you focus on your family and your life today?
[02:26:25] Leslie Guinn: My life today? Okay. [BACKGROUND]
[02:26:31] INTERVIEWER: When did you start your career at U of M School of Music.
[02:26:35] Leslie Guinn: At U of M School of Music, 1971. I've been singing in New York for 10 years before that and before that. All the stuff we've talked about, the army and everything else. So 1971, if the university and I mean, I was right in the middle of being very busy with working career in management know that. It was a perfect marriage of jobs for me because I was hired because I had experience as a performer and very interested in teaching and you have a saying in all this effort. You had to act responsibly in that I have still management in New York and did a lot of performing. But I couldn't just call it a go off and see this as this was my job here. But I went off and did quite a few concerts a year for a long time. It allowed me to keep growing. It brought a certain amount of, say, all the performers did. I produce a certain amount of recognition to the university because I included it into my bio no matter wherever singing. We as performers did that in lieu of what scientists and literature people, they write papers and books and we do the other thing which is performing. Now law school's recognize that. The larger, more independently funded schools I'll say do. Now you have illness like that. It's the only place I was interviewed for, excuse me that I was interested in. But it is the only real interview I did, only because it's worked so well in terms of being near a major airport and I was in and out of New York and other places often enough that I needed to be able to get it in and out. Then we had three children and living in New York was not our first choice. Would come from quieter backgrounds in Texas, and I mean, we've been everywhere, but even so. This was a great opportunity to raise the kids in a vital, lively, but a little less hectic atmosphere and continue my work, which is a vital thing. I didn't write books, so thank God. If I answered your question when I go.
[02:29:14] INTERVIEWER: He's describing career at the University of Michigan.
[02:29:17] Leslie Guinn: Describe it? Very supportive. I learned so much here. I have not been in any administrative work before. I'd never been in an organization like a university or I've been in the army. But that's a whole together different organization and demand. I just did what I do and I got a chance to advance in various ways within the university and administrative work while teaching and while performing. It just all worked during the administration into something while you're still doing these other things. You have an opportunity to bring things before, say your department, that might enhance the department or talk about people you've run into that you would like to see brought in on a search. But everybody gets to do that too. It's a very democratic. You may be chair of something, least this is the way it worked in the performing departments. But you had no more say than the assistant professor. They just walked in the door, everybody gets a chance to do that. It was just you learn to listen, still working on that part. You learn to listen and you try to guide choices. But always with the realization one hopes that you may not be right.[BACKGROUND] That's the hard part, especially raising children. [LAUGHTER]
[02:30:51] INTERVIEWER: Were really touched your love of music lead to finding a login for your life and your territory in the family together. We've talked about Ms. Quinn, and we'd like to know a little bit more about the Quinn family. [LAUGHTER]
[02:31:05] Leslie Guinn: During your teen years or later or what? Important, let's see. What interests me and unknown, as I've said, nothing about science, but is that they all have musical instincts and gifts. They chose for whatever reason not to pursue those professionally. But they all had piano and our Rachel place, flute. She's now an administrator in the school system, but she still plays the flute. That's a big outlet. The others have do the same thing with piano. They are important. We traveled together. They were exposed. What was the real question at the beginning, how you could wander off your easily but the kids.
[02:32:00] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, so it's pretty broad at the beginning and then we have more specific questions.
[02:32:05] Leslie Guinn: Well, with the kids because of my work because earlier we talked about traveling, every summer we spent the first summers here, starting whenever that was early. Where it interlocking, where I taught for the university division there and the kids were there as they can take care first. They did whatever kids do there is, take care of first. When did that for five years and then I was invited to go to the Aspen Music Festival. We all went there. I did that for 14 or 15 summers and then I was at Marlboro before you came here in Vermont at that festival for three summers. They had a lot of exposure to professional musicians and their children in all of these instances, which were very different one from another. Mary Ellen was used to being around all these people who did. One of the things I've really learned it from that are enjoyed. All of the folder role and star struck stuff that you put on people when I certainly did on some of these colleagues of mine. It just goes out the window and you're just like us sitting around here doing what we're doing. That was what the kids grew up with. There were some legendary names that we had a chance to just be around, run into in a cafe and erase histone needs and chats or get together for a glass of wine and it was just extremely casual. Whether it was aspirin or interlocking or whoever it was, I think gave them a comfort in meeting people. They're all very, I would say gregarious, but not in a pejorative sense. Meaning when one daughter she's an instructor for software for municipalities and Rachel is an administrator in the school system in Birmingham. Jonathan is a graphic designer, but he spent days talking with company reps and going through. Everybody's very comfortable with all that. Were very outgoing family and I'm sure I know she is the same, but I think hers comes from all her travels and she's her family is her people that are still alive were not quite quieter than we. Have two brothers were in business and her sister is pretty much like she. I don't know if that covered it or too much. Just what Swift snips or four.
[02:34:55] INTERVIEWER: How many kids do you have?
[02:34:56] Leslie Guinn: Three.
[02:34:59] INTERVIEWER: Are there any stories surrounding the names of your children?
[02:35:05] Leslie Guinn: The hour, let's see. The fact I was trying to get my act together here. Robin, our firstborn. There was a little girl in her neighborhood in Westchester County. That was just is really adorable and her name was Robin. That's how we did that. Robins middle name is Cecilia, and that's the patron St. of music. At that time, Catholics were really urged to, and as a matter of fact, when she was baptized the priest said, "Are you sure you want to name her Robin?" Even after we had already told him, then we stuck to our guns. It wasn't a combative thing at all, but he just felt that that was old school stuff. With Jonathan, I don't remember. He has my name, Leslie for his middle name, but he just goes by John or Jonathan. Mostly Jonathan now I think. Rachel was, I'm not sure about her first name. Her middle name is Marion and sisters named Margaret. Can't remember how we got her first name. I don't remember. [LAUGHTER] [BACKGROUND]
[02:36:48] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe one or two family traditions?
[02:36:53] Leslie Guinn: Fruit cocktail at Thanksgiving that's made from scratch from everything. Peppermint sticks melting in it. No, I can't think. Boy, that's where we need Mary Ellen. I grew up in a family with no traditions like that and I remember them as we're doing them, I'm just a different person. I know nothing there I'm sorry.
[02:37:24] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe a favorite family memory?
[02:37:31] Leslie Guinn: Favorite. I don't know favorite, it's not something I could categorize that way, but I'll never forget seeing our firstborn for the first time and she was being wheeled with Mary Ellen down the hall like she was born, in this respect, keep in mind how long ago, Robbin is 54 now. The hospital procedures, I wasn't allowed to be with Mary Ellen during labor or any of those things so that's terrible, but that's what it was. But I'll always remember that seeing her face bundled up there on the rolling bed with Mary Ellen as they were going down the hall on the way to her room. They say, when someone says, we're expecting and if it's their first, you realize, and sometimes you'd say that your life will never be the same and of course it isn't. When you guys get short-tempered with your mom, just remember that [LAUGHTER] not that anyone would. [NOISE]
[02:38:44] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] Are you working on any musical projects?
[02:38:46] Leslie Guinn: No. Not if the only project was getting all this information available for you guys, but I have all these health issues and things, it affected my voice and so I didn't. No, nothing at all. I don't miss it. I hear it, just that I don't participate in any way. I did that so long and so intensely, I don't miss it.
[02:39:21] INTERVIEWER: How do you carry your passion for music into this phase of your life?
[02:39:24] Leslie Guinn: Into what in my life?
[02:39:25] INTERVIEWER: Into this phase of your life.
[02:39:29] Leslie Guinn: Something I worked on. It's just as I've said it earlier too many times, I don't mean to many but I'm beating a dead horse here. It's just me. I can't imagine not. But I don't think about it. It's just like desert all the time or something, I don't know. But even, for example, sitting in when we were doing the scanning and that little bit of music started on my left. That was just absolutely spontaneous on my part before I even spoke, it was just like a healing something. Certainly something noisy in there it's not that at all, but there's no organization of noise or it's just what it is, a working environment. All of a sudden there was this music. I don't even know what it was right now. But it was just, that's so nice. That's just it. I know I'm boring with this, but I just cannot express the gratitude I have for having been blessed with a love for music and then blessed with the means of participating in it. I could never, I wish moments like that, I wish I were a philosopher or writer or something. I just can't, but there's not a day I don't express some thanks for it. I just know how hard I've grown up with people who worked very hard at jobs that were not gratifying. I've done a bunch myself but those were temporary and I knew damn well they were so that made it very bearable. But when I think about people I knew and love, not just people in the newspapers. My dad, he did tired labor and he did it till he quit working. Every day he was a very cheerful guy. It's those genes that I have. That's the funny part of it all. [NOISE]
[02:41:50] INTERVIEWER: A lot of people our age now feel pressure to choose careers that will make money like business, law, or medicine. What advice would you give to young people who want to pursue their love and talent with the arts in terms of dealing with this pressure?
[02:42:04] Leslie Guinn: Dealing with the pressure, you say? I never encountered that. Possibly because I'm male at that time. But as a teacher, more than once, I had students who were there as voice majors and performance whose parents were leaning on them to get out of that and go into something for which they could be guaranteed living like teaching or something like that. I always said, whether it's good or not, if you don't feel you can't live without participating in this performance aspect, don't go into it because, I don't want to say it's hard or anything can be hard, but it is so rickety in terms of stability, performance I'm talking about. You can be getting into other aspects of music. But that's a hard thing for someone who is a sophomore in college or something even if they feel that they don't have the support of their family. That's hard. Your family is.
[02:43:22] INTERVIEWER: Oh my Gosh, I'm sorry, hold on.
[02:43:24] Leslie Guinn: Good morning. [OVERLAPPING] [LAUGHTER]
[02:43:29] INTERVIEWER: Bye guys, this is a wonderful project I hope you enjoy your time. Oh my gosh, just forget it. Bye, guys.
[02:43:51] Leslie Guinn: Bye-bye. [LAUGHTER] It's fine for me. I'm sorry. [OVERLAPPING] [NOISE] I don't remember what we were talking about now.
[02:44:09] INTERVIEWER: You were talking about sophomore college.
[02:44:10] Leslie Guinn: Making a living in the arts is hard unless you are willing to just chuck caution to the winds in some cases. Not all. But don't knock yourself out doing. You can still enjoy it a lot in ways that do not impinge upon your livelihood. But there's nothing better if it all works for you either. I don't know what else I could say.
[02:44:44] INTERVIEWER: Thank you for everything.
[02:44:46] Leslie Guinn: Thank you, guys. Thank you. But we were almost done and this young lady came in. [inaudible 02:44:49] worse than we do. [inaudible 02:45:01]

Media

2022

Length: 02:44:51

Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)

Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library

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Legacies Project