Pe­ter Ray Blood

Be­fore the pop­u­lar la­bel "di­va" be­came an eas­i­ly ac­quired su­perla­tive for fe­male singers, she was a true di­va. Domi­ciled in Brook­lyn, New York for the past 32 years, Car­ol Ad­di­son re­turned home last week to per­form at I Am Woman 3, staged at Queen's Hall on Sat­ur­day night by Class Act Pro­mo­tions.

Tak­ing time out from her hec­tic pre-con­cert ac­tiv­i­ties, the cel­e­brat­ed songstress paid a vis­it to T&T Guardian for a sit-down chit chat. "I am very ex­cit­ed to be back home," said Ad­di­son as she sat with her hus­band Phill Lewis. "I am ready for the re­union. This vis­it brings back so many mem­o­ries."

Re­flect­ing on her more than three decades away from home, Ad­di­son said: "In 32 years so many things have hap­pened. I got mar­ried, have two grown chil­dren, a boy (Har­mo­ny) and a girl (Mer­cedes). I will give you one of my sur­pris­es for the con­cert. Mer­cedes, who is fond­ly called 'Mer­cy', is go­ing to join me on stage at the con­cert. She's a very good singer."

Like her daugh­ter, the love of singing has been in Ad­di­son from child­hood. She re­called: "From a lit­tle girl, I al­ways used to sing. My fa­ther would tell me to shut up at times, as he want­ed to sleep, and I would be singing non stop. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, my fa­ther used to play the gui­tar, and my broth­ers were al­so in­volved in mu­sic, so mu­sic was al­ways around me.

"My first ex­po­sure on stage was with my big broth­er, Win­ston, at a com­mu­ni­ty show in Tu­na­puna. He pulled me on stage from out the au­di­ence and I sang a bit of a song. Af­ter that I did the Aun­tie Kay con­tests, tele­vi­sion shows, and Ra­dio Trinidad's Sun­day Ser­e­nade with Sam Ghany. All of that hap­pened be­fore my first record­ing, a 45 disc fea­tur­ing My Love (Paul Mc­Cart­ney) and Tricked and Trapped, my own com­po­si­tion, done by Arawak Records.

"Af­ter that, my first LP was Born to Shine, re­leased in 1976. I re­mem­ber that prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams at­tend­ed the launch of Born to Shine, held at The Pent­house,In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain. That event opened up a whole new di­men­sion to my ca­reer as peo­ple be­gan tak­ing even more no­tice of Car­ol Ad­di­son."Af­ter that, doors which weren't open be­fore, swung wide open. Pro­mot­ers were will­ing to put me on stage with big in­ter­na­tion­al names, like Michael Jack­son and The Jack­son Five, Na­tal­ie Cole, Rober­ta Flack, and Li­onel Richie & The Com­modores. That was in Trinidad but out­side I al­so shared the stage with names like Cha­ka Khan, Phyl­lis Hy­man, Cyn­di Lau­per and Pat­ti La Belle."

Ad­di­son has been suc­cess­ful at es­tab­lish­ing a bal­ance be­tween her singing ca­reer and aca­d­e­mics.She said: "When I first ar­rived in New York, my first fo­cus was school and I en­rolled in Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, ma­jor­ing in Mu­sic and the Busi­ness of Mu­sic. I came back home af­ter grad­u­at­ing for a lit­tle while, and worked at the Board of In­land Rev­enue. Up­on my re­turn to the States, I got mar­ried and start­ed my fam­i­ly." Ad­di­son flash­es her well-known, trade­mark smile as she rem­i­nisced on her per­son­al life. She re­vealed: "I met my hus­band through run­ning track with Burn­ley Ath­let­ics Sports Club, out of St Au­gus­tine. I used to run 60 and 100 yards, and al­so did hur­dles. I think I was de­cent at hur­dles, and would usu­al­ly place sec­ond or third in the sprints. This is a part of me that not many peo­ple know.

"Phill used to do track as well but it seems that he was al­so run­ning his eyes on oth­er things even back then, me. "Phill and I re­con­nect­ed in New York. My broth­er, Hugh, was close to Phill and set us up. In­stead of show­ing me around the Big Ap­ple, Phill had oth­er ideas. We've been mar­ried for the past 30 years and it's been great. Our mar­riage en­com­pass­es all–the good, the bad, the in­dif­fer­ent. But, that's what's life is all about." Aretha Franklin is Ad­di­son's fe­male singer and men­tor.

"Aretha has been my idol from child­hood," she said."Lat­er on, I al­so liked Whit­ney Hous­ton. I was dev­as­tat­ed by what hap­pened to Whit­ney. I even met her once, at Sweet­wa­ters Restau­rant in Man­hat­tan."So, out­side of singing and per­form­ing, what does Car­ol Ad­di­son do as a hob­by?"In my free time I love to ex­per­i­ment cook­ing nu­tri­tious foods, blend­ing veg­etable juices and stuff like that, and mak­ing grain breads and cakes. I love writ­ing.

"One of the things I have ob­served with my life is that when mu­sic is ab­sent I am mis­er­able. I have gone through pe­ri­ods in my life where mu­sic was non-ex­is­tent and dur­ing those times I've been mis­er­able. I love bas­ket­ball. I love Kobe Bryant and Le Bron James, and my favourite team is the New York Knicks. Carme­lo An­tho­ny and I are Syra­cuse al­ma maters, so that helps."

Dis­clos­ing that she wasn't a avid church-go­ing young per­son, Ad­di­son said that Christ­mas and East­er were two oc­ca­sions she def­i­nite­ly at­tend­ed church. She said: "What is in­ter­est­ing though is that I al­ways felt in touch with God, be­cause of my moth­er as she was al­ways pray­ing. I have a very close re­la­tion­ship with God and, I do noth­ing with­out con­sult­ing God. I am in per­pet­u­al con­tact with God. Where I am right now is about liv­ing the life and be­ing cen­tred on where God re­al­ly wants me to be."It's not sur­pris­ing to me where God has tak­en me, be­gin­ning with that sin­gle Take Me Back. That song was in­tro­duced to me by Mar­ti­na Cowie af­ter she'd trav­elled to Aus­tralia and some­body in­tro­duced her to a new singer who she found re­mind­ed her of me. She brought the song to me, and I im­me­di­ate­ly fell in love with it, put my own spin on it, and record­ed it.

The was the be­gin­ning of a whole new era of my life. That song be­came one of the most re­quest­ed in my reper­toire. I al­ways have an en­counter with God when­ev­er I sing that song, as the lyrics are so re­al."Ad­di­son thinks that her na­tive land has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the days of the 70s. She said: "The most strik­ing thing to me about Trinidad is the crime rate. I feel a deep sense of sad­ness over what crime is do­ing to my beloved coun­try."I feel that love is miss­ing in this coun­try. Maybe it's be­cause there are so many homes with­out fa­thers? Maybe it's be­cause of eco­nom­ics? When there is love there is shar­ing, there is car­ing, and peo­ple look­ing out for each oth­er. Back in the day, your neigh­bour al­ways looked out for you; they cor­rect­ed your chil­dren, and you could have gone out and left your home open. Now, it seems that peo­ple are just de­tached from each oth­er.

"We seem to be miss­ing love as love is syn­ony­mous with God, be­cause God is love. Maybe that's the price of progress. I think there's an ab­sence of God to­day in peo­ple's lives.

"Look­ing in from the out­side, I am al­so feel­ing a re­turn of a di­vide along eth­nic lines. I thought we'd over­come that many years ago, but it seems to be re­turn­ing.""On the pos­i­tive side I ad­mire the so­cial de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try, the ad­vance­ment in ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, and there are some amaz­ing build­ings. The youth of to­day is so much more ad­vanced than we were most­ly be­cause of the ex­pand­ed aca­d­e­m­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them."Long ago, peo­ple had to go abroad and re­turn home to be more ad­vanced and evolved. Now they re­main here and ac­com­plish ed­u­ca­tion and skills. Some of the most bril­liant minds I've en­coun­tered abroad have been nur­tured right here in T&T."

The last time Ad­di­son per­formed in Trinidad was about five years ago, on San Fer­nan­do Hill at a jazz show. Aaron Neville was the fea­tured artiste then. She re­called: "That was a try­ing time for my fam­i­ly as Phill was suf­fer­ing with colon can­cer, but he still made the trip."I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to this show, es­pe­cial­ly to share the stage with sis­ters. It feels like com­ing back home to be with fam­i­ly you haven't seen for a long time. There's re­al­ly no place like home. Denyse (Plum­mer) and I have al­ways re­spect­ed each oth­er. When my ca­reer was big, Denyse was al­ready an out­stand­ing bal­lad singer. Un­like Denyse, I have nev­er con­sid­ered get­ting in­to ca­lyp­so singing in a se­ri­ous way. I have dab­bled a bit in gospelyso and have a med­ley which I in­tend in­clud­ing on my next CD."

Ad­di­son con­tin­ues to ex­pand her hori­zons in mu­sic and is work­ing on her first movie which will be pre­miered in New York in Sep­tem­ber. She said: "The movie's called The Pas­tor's Se­cret, di­rect­ed and pro­duced by Emer­son Saf­fa. The CD is be­ing re­leased on the same day of the pre­miere. Ac­tu­al­ly the movie is based on a sto­ry I wrote, based on some per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences I had in church, in New York. It's a de­pic­tion of the av­er­age man who wears the priest's col­lar and func­tions in lead­er­ship in the church."Al­though a pas­tor leads a flock and is ex­pect­ed to be per­fect, they're usu­al­ly not, and make lots of mis­takes, just like the av­er­age per­son. I play the pas­tor's wife who doesn't know about his se­crets un­til they are ex­posed. This is some­thing I wrote about five years ago, and it was ac­tu­al­ly staged as a play in New York. I met Saf­fa and he showed in­ter­est in this piece of work. We're look­ing for doors to open right now for dis­tri­b­u­tion. I would love to get it to be part of the T&T Film Fes­ti­val."

Ad­di­son was sched­uled to re­turn to the US last Sun­day evening.