QLS Classic: Ben Vereen

In 2024, Ben Vereen joined Questlove Supreme with his daughter Kabara. Quest' recently called this one of the most powerful QLS episodes in the show's history. What began as a conversation about a legendary, award-winning career in theater, film, and television organically went someplace much deeper. Ben Vereen shared discoveries about his identity and traces his knowledge of self while speaking about Roots, Sweet Charity, and his unforgettable appearance on The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. This QLS episode is a powder keg of emotions, realizations, and timely calls for history and truth from one of our great elders, who is finishing his memoir.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Good People. What's Up? This is Queslo.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
In our recent final episode of Team Supreme, I mentioned
that one of my most underrated episodes of QLs was
this particular one right here. It's our conversation with Ben Breen.
We take this less than a year ago, and I
think it's worth pushing into your feed for a Monday.
QLs classic been shared a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
About his life that really hit.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hard, in particular that that episode of The Fresh Prince
of bel Air was a lot bigger than just a role.
As you'll hear, Ben and his daughter also talk about
roots and why the role of Chicken George and that
mini series was so significant and truthfully, I've been thinking
about this episode since we taped it back in twenty

(00:54):
twenty four. And let's listen back together, Classic encore this
no bemboe Quest Love Supreme. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

(01:15):
Welcome to Court Love Supreme, Quest Love your host. We
are here with the fam. Wha, yeah, hello, where are
you right now?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
You're in La.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'm in the Sunny La.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yes, yes, your your wall situation is so unique.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Every episode I see in you part of your house
I never knew existed before.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Unpaid bills, Yes, sir, it was good to see you.
Everything's well. You know, I complain drinking.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Coffee for QLs, which is a new I vibe, but
I'm super into.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
It right exactly new vibes.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I'm drinking applesire lemonade or the opposite.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Of brag is that's that thing? That's good? Did you
drink first in the morning? That's good a mirror.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Exactly exactly, sugar Steve, what's that brother? Good morning everybody?
How's it going? Very well? Thank you? That's good to hear,
good to hear. What can I say?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Ladies and gentlemen, We you know, we're about checking off
our bucket list, dream interviews and our guest today is
a legend of the big screen, the big stage, and
of the recording studio, depending on your generation or your taste.
Certain if my mom were here, she'd go nuts over

(02:24):
the fact that, you know, let's start Pippin or Sweet
Charity or hair or all that jazz is with us.
Our guest today is one of the first actors that
my parents approved of me watching. If you're you know,
I've mentioned many times that television really wasn't looked upon

(02:47):
unless it was like Chesame Street or music, but Roots
was required watching.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And I watched all that show even at the age
of five.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
So the fact that the character Chicken Joy is here
and in front of me like is mind blowing. Of course,
if you're eighties baby, I'm sure, Layah. Are you an
eighties baby or a nineties baby today?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
I'll be eighties. I'll be eighties all right.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Of course remember him in Webster Yeah, even for gen
Z society that lives for memes, of course we know
him as Will's dad or the fresh Prince of Bill.
There we are in the company of greatness right now,
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Tony Award winning Ben

(03:34):
Veren and also not to mention his daughter at Kabara,
who also helped organize this for us.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Welcome to Quest of Supreme. Hello, how y'all doing?

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Oh? Thank you so to be here waiting for this
quite a long time. So you had my friend and
help me on.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
We're gonna have you on right now. Where are you
talking to us from? What part of the world are
you in.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
I'm in New York City at the Dance Theater of Halem,
Arthur Mitchell's then Theater of Harlem, and I'm honored to
be I'm working my daughter on her new piece that
she's doing called The Resurrection of ot Cyrus. It's going
to be at the Met on January seventeenth. I'm directing it.
And so we're in rehearsal right now, and I'm honored

(04:20):
to be here in Arthur Mitchell's because I remember, I
remember you, Tad. I had a conversation with Glenn Turman,
my good friends, and we went to the High School
of Performing Arts together, and there's one photo that encouraged
me on the wall there and it was Arthur Mitchell.
He was in his beautiful dance post on the wall
and I said wow. And I later became good friends

(04:43):
for them, and now I'm in his studio. So thank
you author.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
So you went to school with Glynn Turman at a
performing arts school?

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Was performing our school? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
What time period was this? If you don't mind me.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
Asking nineteen oh four memory.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I'm only asking that because you know, when I was
in first grade in the mid seventies, my parents made
a big deal of you know, you're going to a
new type of school where you're going to do like acting, art, music, dancing,
like all those things. And I was led to believe

(05:25):
that schools of that caliber were unique to the seventies.
Like I was part of the first generation of performing
art schools. So you're telling me that they were performing art.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Schools before that. It's the fifties. I started in the fifties,
I believe late fifties. I got there in the sixties,
and I believe it just began to take on form.
It was called the High School for the Performing Arts.
Later it's now called Laguadia. They moved up on Tenth Avenue.
But we were the first there was music and art

(05:55):
and performing arts, and we had a rival, you know,
we said, o't nothing, you got to go to performing arts,
you know.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, So in the fifties you went to a performing
arts high school in New York that we still know
as the Fame School. Right, You're blowing my mind that
there was even the idea of black and white students
going to school together studying the arts.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
So what was that experience like for you?

Speaker 4 (06:25):
You understand something, The arts is the one thread that
keeps civilization going. We are all creative aspects of the
creator that created us. So the arts is the one
thing that's going to propel us into whatever experiences we're
going to have in this lifetime. So they can't hold
back the arts. Well, so wonderful about that time, because

(06:45):
you know in the sixties, that's when Neil Martin, Luther
King and it's from Malcolm X. That's streets, you know,
the hippies and the whole movement. So that was all
happening then. So performing arts I got lucky because they
needed boys for the dance apartment. Now Glenn Book's coming
up from acting. I knew nothing about the arts. I'm
from the church. I sang with Sensational Twilights of Brooklyn.

(07:08):
You know, Brooklyn was my home. And when I went
to the High School of Performing Arts, it was a
whole new world. Man. The arts became a new word
in my vocabulary. I saw a dancing sort of first
time I saw a serious musician sort of person. I
saw serious actors. You talk about Beneth Carroll, you know, yes,

(07:28):
Beeth Carroll was there. It was integrated, as we call
in those days.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
So there was a lot of stigma on me as
an elementary school student concerning the arts it was already like, oh,
you're one of those weirdo kids at least, like, you know,
coming to my neighborhood to go to a performing arts
school automatically made me kind of like a social outcast.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Now here's the thing. Music was always my thing.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
But for the first year and a half of me
going to that school, the school was like, before you
get on that drum set, you got to coordinate your rhythm.
And so they brought a pair of tat dance shs
and they're like, you're going to have to learn how
to dance first before we let you on that drum set.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Of course, be in the seventies, what the seventies were,
there was a.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Lot of sigma says you dance, You're dancing was the
idea of dance expression a stigma for you in the fifties,
as it was for me in the seventies.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
The sixties, sixties. Okay, okay, I'm proud of I'm if
people ask me old that, I said, you remember Moses.
But here's the thing about I also went through that
stigma because I ran with gangs. You know, I ran
with the Crossair Lords and you know, the bishops and

(08:52):
the Chaplains and all those guys in Brooklyn. So there
I was going all of a sudden. I remember my
mother getting a list of was required for me to
go into the dance department. I knew nothing about the
drama department. I probably would have h the acting apartment.
I probably would have loved to have tried out for that.
But the wonderful thing I had a guy named David
Wood to talk about the importance of telling his story

(09:15):
through dancing through movement. But the point is that in
my neighborhood, if I came home, now, I gotta get
a dance bag, I gotta get tights, I gotta get
a dance spell.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
ID to wear jumpsuit?

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Yeah, ballet slippers? Yeah, you kidding me. I was walking
about Brogans and you know Garretson. I was, you know,
a tough kid, and I gotta wear ballet slippers. I
wouldn't tell anybody where I was going up for school,
And so they said, man, wasn't that bad. Man wasn't
a bag man and nothing? It is my school stuff.
Let's see, no, not run. Yeah, it was tough. There

(09:55):
was something which you came across that bridge and you
got in that dance studio, a whole new world opened up. Magic.
It's beautiful?

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Was it cathartic for you?

Speaker 5 (10:09):
That relationship with the neighborhood is so fascinating because we
were talking before you got on, of course, the kind
of beautiful. There's a lot of alignment between some quest
Love Supreme guests and yourself. We talked about Glenn Turman,
but when you told that story about being the ballet
Slippers and being in the neighborhood, it made me think
about Prodigy in that way. In the picture of him,

(10:29):
who you know is little Albert. I'm sorry, I know
his rap name is is Prodigy, but you knew him
as little Albert at Kabar.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
What was the dance studio.

Speaker 6 (10:37):
Bernie Johnson, who is a very famous dance.

Speaker 5 (10:41):
Yeah, I imagine he had the same issues as a
little boy coming up with being in a dance school
that his grandmother had built. So I was just wondering
if you guys, if you remember that as he was
a little boy, and that that common thread with you
guys in that way.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
That's interesting.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah, we you know what we were together. The world
didn't matter. It's about us and doing what we did.
We had fun we loved to dance. We love, you know,
the expression of telling our story through dance. And I'd
go into a studio and just make a record player
and just for hours, just dance. You know, do all

(11:17):
sorts of makeup stories, make up stories for myself through dance.

Speaker 5 (11:20):
Did you look at someone on TV? Was there a
dancer like that you used to watch that you admired.
I'm curious who you look to in that way?

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Well, there wasn't many dancers to look to it, and
I didn't. I wasn't into the concert world, into going
to see Bartha Graham or going to see George Valant.
Matter of fact, when I came to the studio to
the school that day, and I'll never forget this, I ok,
I wore you know, if they say not to make
up a dance, said real dance to Quincy Jones' Killer Joe.

(11:49):
I woke here the muter shorts, us kids, sneakers, a
T shirt, my father's skinny brim hat. I'm sitting outside
waiting to go on and watching all these other kids
dancing the balance sheet. She's to Chopain and you know,
all these deep cats about wow, And I got to
my dance there was white people sitting at the table.
I know where they were, So I got up and

(12:10):
did my little cool d the d I thought I
was pretty cool. I sat down and the cityusing story.
There was a lady named doctor Rachel Yoker, and she
came over me. She said, did you how did you do?
She said you liked the school? I said yes, I
She said it is I. I said yes. I said

(12:32):
you mean all right? I said yes I. She says,
what's your name? Was said? Vision said what I said, Benjamin?
She said you mean ben Juman. I said, yeah, Benjamin.
What's wrong with you? She said, well, do you like
the school? Yes? I right? She said okay, and then
she said, you know these people at the table? I said, no,
this white people? To me said you don't know George

(12:54):
Balance she no, Martha Graham, no, Toerne Robbins. No. Why.
I had no idea of these people who had would
carved the importance of dance into our culture. I later

(13:14):
found out about Catherine Dunham, later found out about Juth Jamison.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Jameson, Yeah, oh man.

Speaker 4 (13:24):
And to be able to say that and have the
experience of meeting them and walking the same path with
them and having them call me friend.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Because you know, you dip your hand or your tail
into so many creative waters. Normally I asked what was
your first musical memory? But I would like to know
from you, what's the first thing that you created? What
was your first moment that you realize I'm a creative
I know that you were born in North Carolina. I
don't know when you moved to Brooklyn, But at what

(13:58):
point do you realize that your artistic Like, what was
your first creative project in life?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
I wasn't born in North Carolina. My my biological mother
was Launburg, North Carolina. I was born in Florida, Dade County, Florida.
You see the arts. It's tricky and it's wonderful. I'm
writing my book now, my memoirs, and I remember playing
in the streets and remember having little dance parties, you know,

(14:26):
you know, after school, we do these little dances. And
as white children, was coming down the street one day
on Fulton Street, and it was right in the fifties,
and they were soliciting for the young boys, young kids
to put into the art school, dance school. Because it's
right around the time when the you know, the civil
rights are starting out, and so they wanted to show
their windows weren't broken. Say, have some a few black

(14:48):
kids in school. And that's how I got into the
Start Time Dance studio. But I never thought about the
fact that my creative aspect that was just part of me.
There was natural love to sing. I love the dance
at parties. I didn't have a form to it. I
didn't call a modern dance. I didn't call a ballet.
I didn't call it tap and An interesting thing I

(15:09):
lived right across the street from a shoe shine Parlow
called tip tap and toe. These are brothers who were
in vaudeville. And I wondered why these guys on Sundays
because in those days they had the blue law in
Brooklyn that means bondy liquor. So every Sunday you see
a lion wrapped around the block getting the deacons getting
their shoes shine. Because brothers are being there. You get

(15:36):
online and standing and get this shoe shine. You know.
So these guys are going to tip tap and toe.
We get the rag snapping. You have jazz music playing
and these brothers sit back there and he'd be singing
then through a you know, a shuffle back, then snap
the rag fat and then they have a hand on

(15:56):
little Dixie cups a whiskey. So the lives are around
the corner the brothers where they go to church. They
had to have their little shot.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
All right, That makes sense because even today, you know,
like you're always seeing these terror cart businesses, these random
terror cart businesses, and you know you'll see them in
a lank city or New York or like any cosmopolitan city.
And I always wonder, for the life of me, how
are these businesses thriving like a woman or anyone reading

(16:26):
your future. I just found out that those are basically
people that have sort of in place owner or renter's law.
In other words, that place used to be a residency,
but then once a business district is established, you're not
supposed to live in a business district. So basically it's
sort of an underhanded way of the city saying you

(16:48):
can still live here, but you have to be a business.
So thus, anytime you see a terror card reading or
let me read your future, it's just a residence. But
they have to have a storefront that's like a business
and a wink. So that now that makes sense. That

(17:09):
shoe shine people really had a side business of moonshine
speakeasies while you get your shoes shine.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
That makes sense, now, that makes total sense.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
You know they didn't sell liquor on Sundays Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
So wait, New York was a blue law state as well.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
You had a blue law in New York City.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
I never knew that.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
But the thing is is that, like I have, my
toes also dipped in various waters. But like for me,
drumming is always my passion. If you just had one
thing to say, that's what I'm known for for you,
because again you're known for your singing, your acting, everything,
you're direct. What is the one medium in the arts

(17:56):
that you say is your north star employment preach.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's you come on now, mayor at this point, that's
you do.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, But if it's all taken away from me.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Drum set, yeah, yeah, for me, it's leave me my voice.
Let me tell my story, my story through song, through dance,
you know, tell my story. Let me give it to
the young people, let me pass it on. I've lived
such a life then it's nice to be able to
say here it's yours. Now, go.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Take me through your life as a creative. What was
your first step into a profession.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
I just graduated from the High School for the Performing Arts.
There's a woman there named Janette Carol and she was
doing Michelle called The Prodigal Son off Broadway at the
Greenwich News Theater. I'm talking about. You don't bout a
professional show, right. I never knew anything about Broadway or
the theater. I had never been on a Broadway stage

(19:09):
until Bob Fosse. But I go to the show. It
was in a graduate greennich News Theater. It was downstairs,
a little theater, and uh, that was my first production.
And one night I'm coming out of the theater. I
was in my first Son of been born, and I
was nay getting to the theater. I had to spend
time with my first wife and got back to the

(19:31):
theater and the dance captain had taken my role and
gave it to his love, and I wasn't going to
have that because it was my role. So I went
on stage anyway. So those stage where I said they
can't do that, I said, no, they can'ts. I went
on stage, guy got dressed, went on stage, and we're
fighting doing the show on stage. I'm he's in my place.

(19:53):
I'm hitting him. He's hitting me this or and people
must say, they're going, wow, this show is so real.
I got I come off stage. I'm angry. I'm leaving
the theater. I'm going to Glenn's house, you know, to
get myself cooled off. And it's a little guy sitting
outside of the door, and he says, he says, excuse me, Yeah,

(20:13):
what do you want? He says, I'm looking for Benjamin Verena.
I'm bench. What do you want? He said, you look
like you could use the dinner. My name is Langston,
used I wrote this.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Whoa, Well, you can't just you just drop that.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
You did that? Yeah, took me to dinner. He said,
you looked like good boy your dinner. So he took
me a little a little Italian joy in the village
and we sat and talked, and he told me about
himself and told me a guy he's written the play
and inviting me up the Harlem for the first time.

(20:49):
So that was my first professional job. Uh, and the
time would buy And the next time I got a
job was uh, you'll read about in the book. He
was on the subway, I jump turned style, I went
to New York City. I was standing on the corner.
I went by my school and I was really depressed.
I went by Performing Arts. I looked at the school

(21:10):
and going, where am I going? What's going to happen?
And I walked down to the news stand and I
opened up a newspaper. Backstage in his audition for that
day for a show called Sweet Charity going to a
place called Las Vegas, starring Woman and Juliet Prowse, directed
by Bob Fosse. And that was the first time I
was scept on Broadway Sturge at the Palace Theater. I

(21:32):
went to the audition. It was like the opening of
all that jazz. Yes, and I went that was one
of those kids on the stage standing there Washington. Cool
guy walked down the middle of the aisle smoking a cigarette.
He gets up on stage. He does the demonstration for
us to do, and the ashes never fall. I said,
this guy.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
He just smoked to the end and the ashes just
grew and grew.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Hung there, but he did the combination turns and boom,
steps to step boom, and they stopped. Okay, do the steps.
We couldn't do the steps because you're too busy watching
the ashes see if they're in Fall.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Okay, So my mother is, you know, probably the show's
biggest fan, and.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
She will scream on me.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
You drop so many names that she'll scream on me
if I don't go in the further detail. And my
mom's from Pittsburgh. Okay, I'm gonna ask about Bob Fosse.
But you mentioned the legendary Martha Graham. You studying under it?
What was what was it like studying under Martha Graham?

Speaker 4 (22:38):
Well, I didn't actually have a class about the Graham.
I studied with one of her dancers named David Woods. Okay,
it's one of the teachers there. It was amazing, you
know for me getting into the middle. The first day
of school, they have you line up and then they
have you change and you get dressed for your class.

(22:59):
You go to your glasses and my first day in school,
I wore my suit that I wore with the Sensational
Trials to Brooklyn. My mother bought me in the tashed sharecase.
I still like my tash shad case. And then they
said go get dressed. All the guys went and put
on their dance clothes. I put on my dance clothes,
put my suit back on. That's what it was raised,

(23:19):
you know, don't just walk around your underwear. So I
get back out there in my suit on. She said,
excuse me, doctor was saying, you're taking class of that.
I said yes. He said, well, where's your dance clothes?
I said, my suit You can't dance that way. Get
in there, put on your dance clothes. And that was
the beginning of wonderment. Yeah. But David Woods, who was

(23:44):
really the foundation of my actings as well, because he
would tell us, he say, you can't just dance. It's
got to tell a story. So find the story that
you want to tell through your movement. And that's why
dance is so personal to me. You know, in modern dance,
you must tell a story. It isn't about just steps.

(24:04):
It's about emotion. It's about the story that you're telling.
Although it may not be the choreographer may not is
telling you his story. But you got to find your
story within the movement. What makes you move this way,
what makes you sing this way? What makes you tell
your story through drama, through the word this way? You

(24:26):
have to create it, at least for me. You have
to relate to something within you that connects to that
emotion and that's how we dance be That's how I danced.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
For a lot of us, at least for my generation.
This conversation is really transformational as far as like my
mind state, because I think every person thinks that their
era in the world is the kind of you know,
black and white, the color Wizard of Oz thing, like
everyone thinks like, oh, when I was born, then suddenly
modern times began. But you know, I would zoom that

(25:00):
until Roots came along, that a lot of African Americans
weren't even thinking in terms of their history going back
to Africa, unless you know, they were of the generation
that watched Tarzan as a kid in the fifties and sixties.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
The Marcus Garvey movement, and he was down with.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
That, right.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
So what I'm asking you is when you're told to
tell your story and the vocabulary of our African history
really wasn't super enforced unless you were part of specialized movements.
In your mind, when you are expressing yourself and reaching
inside for your emotions and through dance, what is it

(25:43):
that drove you creatively? Like what are you thinking of
when they're telling you tell your story?

Speaker 4 (25:50):
Well, I'm thinking of my emotional feelings and what I
feel in that moment of death. Story makes sense, all
right if I have safe For example, if I tell
a story of my listen, keep him we going to
performing us? What did that make you feel? Like? How
did you feel the first day you stepped on that stage,

(26:11):
when you stepped into that studio? What was it feeling
to you and feeling? What's that story that you want
to tell right there? And then that creates a whole movement,
yes for us coming up. And I was as far
as we're talking about ancestry now, when we talked about
black history in my school coming up in my era,
it was one paragraph your slave and Lincoln freed you,

(26:34):
you know, and we know that's not true. And long
comes a wonderful man named Alex Haley who says, I'm
going to devouch that because it's not true. And he
goes back to Gambia and he finds his roots, and
he writes a wonderful book called Roots. And we all
now say, and now the world is going whoa wait
a minute, waking up. There was more to it than

(26:56):
this what's in our history books. There's more to my story,
you see. It's so interesting. When Roots came out, it
was just the book, and I had heard about it,
and like a lot of us did, and I just
knew I wanted to be a part of that movie,
that TV series that was And I went to my
agent and I said to him, listen, there's this book.

(27:19):
I think ABC is gonna make a movie out of
it called Roots. Cinda, I really i'd like to be
to try out. What he says to me, Ben, you're
a song and dance man. They're looking for actors, he said,
So listen, there's a there's this group that starting out.
You got a big hit called your Family's Sister Sledge.

(27:39):
He says, they're going to open for you in Chicago,
So why don't you go do that? And you have
another to get for you guys down in Savannah. So
I said yeah, But Kenny said, Ben, they're looking for actors.
So I get on I get on the plane. I
go to Chicago. This it's a Sledge. They opened to
be a wonderful these little girls, the little Girls, and
we get to Sabana, Georgia. He used to do a
character called Burt Williams about my ancestry, about the performer.

(28:05):
There was a time in American history where black people
in the theater were not allowed on stage unless we
wore a black face. And he went through that. So
I told that story and coming at the show that
afternoon in Savannah, Georgia, there was a guy came backstage
and they would staying Margolis and he said, I want
you to read my Chicken George And I said, I said, said,

(28:28):
what's the chicken George? He said, We'll shoe me down
here shooting a show called Roots. He said, Michael, And
I said, I don't care, man, if Chicken George's guy
in the boat going, let me out of here. Let
me out of here, please please, I'll be there. And
that's how I got the bar. I had no idea
how deep it was going to go and what I mean.

(28:49):
It opened up a whole avenue for me and for
all of us to look back and honor our ancestry,
which we must continue to do. This stay four because
our ancestry of the reason why we're here today, their struggle,
their fight, their determination to go through slavery. Imagine coming

(29:12):
across the water, having being stolen from your family, you're
on and you're put on chains. Change what was a chain,
and you're being put on a boat on and you
put to an island, and you're gone away with a
bunch of people you've never seen. The white and you
see a bunch of other people your color were not

(29:34):
the same languages, and we're all chained inside this boat
and someone jumping off the side. They refuse to go
to they're gonna know what's gonna happen. They don't want
to be a part of it. But the bravery of
those people went through that passage and stood on that
on that slave block and watch their families being torn apart,

(29:55):
which which I think in my mind, destroyed our culture together.
The that strength and to tell their stories to be forgotten. No, no,
not on my watch.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
How long did they give you to prepare that role?

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Take us through the process of preparing, executing, and then
leaving that character.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
I never looked their character.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Boy all right, chicken joys.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Well, for me, it was all because understand, my family
we never sat around and talked about then, because we
were surviving in the now. My family was the educators
or the the you know, they were not of that elk,
you know, if they were field workers, you know, survivors,

(30:50):
and so We never sat around and talked about education,
about government, about what's going on day to day survival.
So I got this. I knew there was a deeper story.
When I got the opportunity to tell my story, it
was like, how do I find my research? So I
called my elders. You know, can you tell me about

(31:11):
what it was like during this time that time? And
you know, and a lot of it came from imagination
once again, what it must have felt like. And Chicken
George was so he's so beautiful. You know, the one
thing I do is that when I get to a character,
especially someone like Chicken George, I asked permission to enter
into that realm of consciousness and what's been like for you?

(31:36):
Educate me, teach me. And he took me on his journey.
And I tell you the respect and the admiration that
the cast and the crew had doing that, it was amazing.
It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Did it feel safe?

Speaker 5 (31:51):
Did they provide like a cause you know in twenty
twenty if you guys made this in twenty twenty four
or twenty five, there would be all kind.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Of counseling on set.

Speaker 5 (31:59):
And you know, when you when you broke out a
character there'd be somebody to make sure are you okay?

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Like, how did y'all handle that?

Speaker 4 (32:06):
No?

Speaker 6 (32:07):
Not in twenty twenty four, sorry to jump in now,
please go.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Please cabar that will come later. Oh not in twenty
twenty four, My bad. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:16):
Four. During that time, it was self nurturing. And that's
why I say the cat the crew, even the crew
was aware that we were touching upon something that was
in other words, I hate to use this word but taboo.
But the respect and reverence that the crew had and

(32:36):
would like to see that one scene I never forget
the scene where Richard Rowntree was dating my mother time
Leslie other one was playing kissing and there's a scene
where she had talked him into taking her to find
her father and they go back and they're late coming
back to the plantation and his masa at the time

(32:59):
were supposed to chastise him and Richard round. She was
supposed to beg for him, not to beat him. And
I'll never get this. Richard said, you want me to
grobble to a white man? Do you know why? I
am mm hmmm. I don't groobble for no white man.

(33:19):
And the director said said Richard, we need this just
for the next scene. He said, nord to he said,
he said, you can do this. He says, I ain't
grabbling and no white man, it's like that. And he said, well,
he said, just one time, he said. He looked around,
He looked at at Kissey and my mother Leslie, looked

(33:41):
at the castle and the crew. You went, you got
one shot. And he gets down. He does that scene
where he says, please bost some morsel, don't beat me,
and we just finished. The director said, goud, okay, that
was a good friend. Anybody go home sake, Okay, thank you,
thank you very much. Because it was like, I mean,
all of a sudden, we had to reflect on the

(34:03):
fact that what it must have been like to have
the wobble to white people for our survival. That the
big you know, I think about my oof, don't get
me started. I think about what people went through as slaves, kings, inventors, doctors,

(34:30):
leaders being stripped. We built empires and civilizations and now
we are at the bottom of the chain. They gave
us slop and we made it a cuisine. We made
it a cuisine.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
I can't even get to that extent of thought it
makes me think of also the artists who have had
to play these roles. And it's funny because as you said,
as you said, this was a taboo thing and now
it's not. Now we've had several movies that have followed,
and it makes me think about all the black actors
who have had to tackle these rolls, like from Chiwaitali,
Joe for to Jamie Fox, to Lapita and Jongo. And

(35:08):
I'm curious if anybody ever reached back to you and went,
how did you do this?

Speaker 3 (35:13):
How did you do this thing?

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Because we who were there at the first beginning a
waiting to say this is how we did it? Because
what annoysment? I loved my brother LaVar Burdon loved him,
yet he felt that maybe I let me take it
this way, but he never allowed us to talk to
the cast, They say, what did you go through? How

(35:38):
did you get there this point? Oh?

Speaker 3 (35:40):
With the newer roots? Are you talking about the new roots?
The newer roots?

Speaker 4 (35:44):
I said, Okay, they did a good job, but as
far as they could do. But we could have given
them another layer that's much deeper, because we were there.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
We were I was curious about thank you for answering
that question.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
We cried and wept and what to do, but we
knew we had to do it for the art and
to tell the truth story as far as Hollywood would
allow us to tell the truth stories. You understand, Ruth
just scrounged upon the surface really went down, But what
really went down you can do those wounds, you go deeper.

(36:20):
They were knights. I come home and my wife Nancy,
she go you okay, I say yeah, And nights I
was just being tears, like okay, okay, and let me
get myself ready, Okay, let's go do the scene. And
although I was friend chicken George, who was like a dandy,
but there was that moment when he finds out his
father is white. It's what he's gone through. And watching

(36:44):
your fellow neighbor, brothers, sister, they whipped because they didn't
want to pick up something they didn't want to do,
so they said the same wrong thing because they were
field niggas, then the house niggas. Because it's to you
a little better with the field telling those stories. And
I think those stories have not been told enough. As

(37:07):
long as my Jewish brothers and sisters can tell us
about the Holocaust. We must talk about our Holocaust. Excuse me.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
I agreed.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
Let's read so we know where we are going, otherwise
they will do it to us again.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
Did this journey at all make you want to go
back to your own roots and find out about who
you are? And can you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 4 (37:37):
When I was with Sammy Davis Junior, I got I
was finishing a movie called Sweet Charity with Shortian McClair, Yep,
Davis Junior and Sammy and I was, I was, I
was feeling pissed to Sammy. Why well, sam went on
on TV television, those dames. He had three channels. The

(37:58):
fourth channel came out and he said, well, you know,
I know how how hard it is for us in
this business. So there's any young black entertainer out there?
I think no? In those days were negroes in colored right.
I want to talk to me. I'm open to talking
to him. I mean, you know how much courage it

(38:20):
took me to get up the skids from Brooklyn and
we opened Caesar's Palace. I'm there Caesar's Palace and I'm
going into Casino, which I'm hearing stories. Lean on hornhurlbelly
had to be in trailers outside and walk through the
slop before they got on stage. Now I'm staying in
a hole in an apartment right across the street from
from the Caesar's Palace, and I'm coming in there and

(38:41):
I'm standing there. I see Joe esuis walking down and
how Tomorrow giv him money. And I'm sending wipe that
still gave me money to gamble, And I mean, I'm like, wow,
I'm skips from Brooklyn look at me. And then Sammy
says he'll talk to me. Yes. So I'm waiting one
day for sam to come to me Rose Nook, which
the lounge the head there with people like Jack Machel

(39:02):
hangout and the platters and and so he was coming
and walking with fifty of his closest friends. So I
walk over and I go, miss mister Davis, I heard
that he said, talk to my secretary. I went, what
mm hmm, really okay. So then I get to show

(39:23):
Sweet Charity. I'm on tour with with Cheter rivera end
up in catalog. I get a telegram we want it.
I'm doing Daddy Blue Bank a role in the show.
You know, I got to sing my own solo I
was excited all let Bob Fosk and trusted business role.
Now I get this telegram we want you to come
to Hollywood to star in the movie Sweet Charity, and

(39:46):
I went, wow, I'm gonna do doing the role. Oh
Daddy brew Bank. Then I get to the movie and
they said, no, Sammy Davis is gonna do this role.
Saturday attitude. Chake my role too, man, I have done
do with you. He walks in and say says, Samy's
too sick to do the row. I went, whoa, I'm
gonna put apart. Yeah, so I'm standing on line and

(40:08):
who should walk through the door in the wheelchair? Sammy
David Juni and everybody goes, oh, sam oh Sam, I say,
I do I sit back? So saf notices I have
this attitude man. He goes, yeah, don't come on the
stories say fight everybody, fight everybody over. We're gonna have
this much with everybody. Everybody goes, I stand outside. So

(40:31):
Sammy sends over on his henchmen. He says, uh, mister
Davis likes to have dinner with you in Little Santa Monica.
I said, yeah, right, cool. I got so excited, I'm
gonna put brand New Soon I got the little got
to the hotel like an hour before. Right, I went
in the restaurant. I said, mister, my name is benjam Veren,

(40:53):
and miss Davids Many said, wait who wo wo wo
wo wo. Well not here, you know, let's see if
you're in the list. Listen Benjamin, Yeah, okay, come in.
So I go to this long table and I'm sitting
his long table. As I got there, like at six thirty.
We want to be there at seven seven things dinner.
And I'm looking around the room. There's Joey Bishop, There's

(41:14):
you know, Dean Martin, there's Lucio Ball, all these celebrities
sitting around, and I'm sitting this long table smoking, waiting
for Sammy. Nine thirty. No, Sammy, I'm sitting there at nine.
I said, okay, say you guys, you're not coming. So
I got up. I started to leave. Who walks in
Sammy with the same fifty closest friends, He says, So

(41:37):
sit down, sit sener. He says, you know, I did
a show called Golden Boys some years ago on Broadway
and think about doing it again taking it to London.
So well, now it's a different time because we have
the black panthers. There's a black movement going on, and
we need somebody who's angry, who's the fire And his

(41:58):
agent says, nudget, we go asking for the role, and
what is asking for the role? I said, missus David,
we got the role. So he hires me to do
poll the Boy. Right. So we says, now we're going
to do the show, uh in Chicago. Then we're going
to London, and he says, we have a passport. I said, no,
I don't I have a passport. He said oh. He said, okay,

(42:23):
just right down to where you were you were born
and you'll send you your birth certification. We got the
crassport and you're gone. I said, okay, so right down
to Florida. Mimi flund I get this letter back saying
we do not have a Benjamin Augustus Verene born to
an SSI Varene. However we do have are born to
a Pauline Verene. However, we do have a Benjamin Augustus

(42:46):
Middleton born to an SSI middle East Middleton on that date.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
What wait, that's how you found your roots?

Speaker 4 (42:58):
So I called my mother. I said, Mom, you got
to call these people. I'm saying any days, you don't
take him to London. And I ain't need my passport,
I need you. And they say, said I read a
letter and she went it was quiet. I said, mom,
whoa and she said, I was hoping you'd never know.

Speaker 5 (43:25):
Hm.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
And that's how I had my journey, then my my daughter.
When I had my daughters, you know, they came to me.
Babies came to me and said, Dad, all we have
is mom, and but we don't have any We're gonna
have children one day, and we didn't know who's in
our So I said, okay, So I started searching. I

(43:47):
was down in Mexico and ran to a friend named
uh La Fever Rocks and the Fever and this lady
and I got to talk and went to Mexico to
get vitamin drip because in those days invited the States been.
So I go down to meet her and we go
to dinner, and I stought. She starts telling me she's
a genealogist. So I said, oh yeah, I said, well,

(44:10):
and I saw telling my story. She said, well, why
don't we go searching? So I go to an office
in Washington and see she worked for the Pearson And
that's when the journey began and I found my family
about what is it Toborrow sixteen years ago?

Speaker 6 (44:24):
Yeah, fifteen years ago around.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
My family And here's the ironic thing, he said, We
all read this in the book. The book is much
better than this interview.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
This interview is much better than your career retrospective. Like
this might be my favorite episode of the Quest of Supreme.
I did not know this was coming.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
So we start searching, and here we is a wonderful story.
When I got married at a very young age, it
was to the bishop's daughter of the Holiness Church. When
I find my family, come to find out my grandfather
was the originator of the Holiness churches in the South

(45:04):
pier Since, now here's the thing. My first father in law,
we go to a place in Connecticut. We haveing Connecticut.
We had a thing called Complication. That's where you know,
all the black churches get together and we celebrate the other.
And so when I found my family, I called my

(45:25):
sister Gloria, and it was so weird. You know how
it is you find you just like it was what
a conversation. I said, hello, she said hi, I said Gloria.
She said yeah, I said, my name is Benjamin, I'm
your brother. She said, yeah, they're telling me. You told

(45:46):
me that. So how she found out? She said that
someone called and said you better sit down. He said,
well she got another brother. Said I don't know, I
got a brother. Said no, you better sit down. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
I said, it's your oldest sister.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
Huh, oldest sister. You have a Yeah, his name is Benjamin,
said Benjamin. She said yeah, She said, I got my Eugene.
I got She said, no, you have another brother. His
name is ben Vereen. You better sit down. So I

(46:21):
call her and I say who I am, introduced myself
and they said that year they were having the my family.
Part of the family was about the Pearsons, and so
in Connecticut. Now I lived an hour away from my
mother my entire life and never never. And here's the thing.

(46:44):
We're sitting at the table at the reunion and my
wife there, my children, my grandchildren, and we're sitting there celebrating.
There was only supposed to be fifty p or sixty
people showing up. It was one hundred or two hundred
people showed up. When they found out I was part
of the family, they all come to Connecticut. Who was
sitting at the table and in walks my first wife's

(47:05):
aunt and she looks at me. She said, you're Essie's son.
Oh god, yes, she said, ESSI was my best friend.
I could have been in church with my first family
sitting next to my mother and never knew it.

Speaker 6 (47:25):
And it's heartbreaking because she also really admired him an artist,
and she was a fan of his, and she would
when he was on television, she would shut off. She
would tell everybody to be quiet because she had to
have full attention on my father's performances. But she didn't
know that was her son.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
It's so heartbreaking, he said, did not didn't know, And I.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
No, I'm messed up.

Speaker 4 (47:56):
She was gone when I found she got to stand something.
In the black Communitian those days, they do things like that.

Speaker 5 (48:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like you just send somebody off
or you you know.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
You just like you know me. Look, the woman lived
upstairs with us on Herkim the street. She had fourteen
kids because the government said you don't have to work,
just have babies, so she'd have babies, you know. And
there was a lot of that going on in what
they called the ghetto. Yeah, and so my mother is
my mother. The story I got was, my mother just

(48:27):
came from New Orleans where she got into an altercation
and beautiful and she's working as an orderly at the
hospital in Miami. She was coming home one night. She
told me it was raining and she was standing in
the hall in the storeway, and there was this woman
standing beside us, pregnant, and they got a conversation. Name
was Essay. They had a conversation going on, and she

(48:47):
invited a woman home to her home, and she said
a few days later she had practice. I can't and
she said, she went to work, came home and there
was a nope beside me, saying I don't want to
take it. And she said, okay, no man, let's go

(49:08):
to New York City. And it's an interesting thing about
that scenario because I told my sister, I said, I'm
sorry I wasn't here for you as a brother. She
looked at me, she said, don't be sorry, she said,
and you came with us, you probably wouldn't. Benbury, I was.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Going to ask you, how conflicted do you feel because
you had to go through your life in order to
get to this very place right now. But I know
there has to be a part of you that wonders
in an alternate reality where you're with your actual family,

(49:59):
that somehow you might serendipitously wind up in the same position, Like,
how did that make it? How long did it take
you to process? And really did it make you feel
complete as a human? Did it leave you more conflicted
about your history?

Speaker 4 (50:17):
Was still a question because my father I have yet
to find that family, the Middletons. All I know is
he died in Philadelphia, and so we don't know.

Speaker 6 (50:33):
We don't know if that's truly the father to that.
We're still trying to figure out the identity of the father,
the true How.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Would you do that, Kamar? How do y'all even get.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
To Skip Gates?

Speaker 6 (50:44):
Well, we've been in touch with Skip Gates. Hopefully we're
going to be on next season, and but we've been
in that process for a while. But we'd love now.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I would have assumed he would have been on Find
My Roots, because it's.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Well, not many people were privy to the story, And
you're right even right now, I mean, I'm not spoiler
a learning because he wrote about in this book Maurice
White of earthvend Fire, same thing he was five years old,
his mom gave him to the next door neighbor, and
she went off to Chicago, had a fit, you know,

(51:23):
got lucky, married a doctor, had seven children. Maurice joins
her at eighteen. But there's something inherently broken inside of
maurice white soul that, yes, he was given away, that
even though he miraculously kind of wound up in a
metaphysical self love space at least musically and creatively to

(51:46):
teach us to love ourselves, you know, afrocentricity and all that.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Stuff, But.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
That I believe the emotional blockage that Maurice had with
really not coming to grips with I was so unlovable,
no one wanted me. I felt personally led to his
Parkinson's disease.

Speaker 4 (52:15):
There, but the scars still I'm dealing with. Accordingly, It's
take me some very strange prices. You've regotten the book,
But what.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Can I ask, did you go through any sort of
therapeutic process to sort of deal with that feeling, that
emotion so it doesn't live inside you.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
Well, you know it's going to always live inside of you.
Says how to process your life through that? I've been
through many counselors and people like that. And try to
try to help me. But it really comes down to
individual choice of what you choose to be today and
how you live each day in processing your life. Accepting.

(53:00):
It's a big word, acceptance, And I'm grateful that for
my journey. Would I have done it differently had I known,
baby so? But I can't say that because I am
not the one who's controlling the spiritual aspect of my life.
I have my human aspect which is going on the

(53:22):
journey that the spirit wants to experience through me. But
had I known, I don't know. I can't say I
know what I know today, And I'm grateful. When the
Quest Love.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Show, Okay, I wasn't going to make a big, rough
high of this only because you have such an expansive
career and I know where you're going that I didn't
want to reduce it to this question that I now
feel like I have to ask you.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yes, yo, man, I'm yo. Oh God. You remember the
Matthew Knowles episode where hang on, oh shit, I'm sorry,
what's going on?

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Look For the last year and a half, in hearing
these stories slid Stone, earth Wind and Fire, this this
really hits me in my heart only because And the
reason why I keep grappling with emotions is again, as
human beings were really not you know, we're taught to

(54:29):
suck it up, you know, man up, and really not
process our emotions. And I was wondering, like, how have
we dealt with this for five hundred years? And you
explained that through dance, through music, through me drumming. Perhaps
maybe that's how I get my rage out my you
know that sort of thing. But the reason why your

(54:52):
episode of The Fresh Prince of bell Air resonates so
much with my generation and millennials and gen z is
we all felt Will Smith's pain, and we you know,
the whole fight.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
And I'm gonna be a man. I'm gonna be all
right like that whole Martin.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
I'm gonna be all right like we're taught to sucking
the tears and not show like. I won't let you
see me sweat or see me cry or any sort
of as a sign of defeat. Knowing what you knew
about your own family history, were the creators of The
Fresh Prince of bel Air or Will Smith himself, were

(55:33):
any of them aware?

Speaker 4 (55:35):
No?

Speaker 3 (55:37):
Did you?

Speaker 2 (55:37):
You didn't share with them?

Speaker 6 (55:40):
This information hasn't been really shared publicly.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
I'm just I.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Thank you for sharing that because it's it's it's it's
touched me.

Speaker 4 (55:52):
They knew nothing about this, hadn't been talking about this,
has kept it to myself. I'm just beginning to open
up about this. But they should choose to tell this
story at the time in my life and here we
are talking about it. It was a very deep subject
for all of us.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
How was that to shoot?

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Was that?

Speaker 5 (56:13):
What did it make it in your head? Or were
you just the constantly professional and just you know.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
Tell that story, find the seed of that story and
sharing it and being that man who rejected his son
because of his background, his fear, his pain. You know
that moment when I'm silent, So I went through so
much in that silence as not being said when I'm
walking out the door. Was nobody saw that pain, what

(56:42):
I went through personally, So I had no words for him,
and the writers had no idea this was going down.
Why they were chose to write this particular show for
me or why will say I want him to do
this part? Oh pay it? No? But the university and

(57:04):
it was the beginning of this conversation we're having right then,
and as a daughter.

Speaker 6 (57:08):
It was a hard thing to watch as well, because
my father growing up was always on the road, you know,
and when everyone thinks, you know, when you're this kid
of a hate to use the word celebrity, you have
this privileged life and everything's great and you're these fabulous

(57:29):
parties and your parents are ever present. But no, I
would tell people, when you see my father on television,
that's time that he's not with me. He's not with
my siblings. And especially when we were young, you know,
the only times you would see him is during breaks
for school and he was working because those were prime times.
And you know, people thought it was cool because at

(57:50):
one point he was hosting all the Disney specials, you know,
in the holidays, and yeah, great, you get to cut
the line at Disney. But I still don't have my father.
You know. My mother was amazing. She did everything that
she could within herself, but we also had to grapple.
And watching that episode for me was because, you know it, well,

(58:17):
it was an interesting time in my life period. But
I was probably in college around that time, and my
father and I had gone through a lot, like just emotionally,
We've always had this like kind of hard relationship because
even as a little kid, it was this whole thing
of Dad's coming home. Oh my god, Dad's home. And
I would kind of stand back because I was resemful

(58:38):
because I didn't have time with my dad. And then
it was always the limos here. Okay, the assistants are
here putting everything in the car, and he's off again,
you know. And I always was kind of the defiant one.
I remember this one instance. I don't know if you
remember this.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Dad.

Speaker 6 (58:54):
We're living in Saddle River because my parents decided to
move us out of Hollywood. So it was about eight
the time, and you know, spoiled had the Apple computer
and the television in my room and everything like that.
And I said something to you, Dad, and you were
getting ready to go somewhere because the limo was outside.
He was dressed up in his tucks and he said, you.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Said what to me?

Speaker 6 (59:17):
And I said whatever I said, and he like was
coming at me, and I was in my nightgown getting
ready to go to bed. I got up and iran
across the property. We had huge property, and I remember
standing in this creek that we had because I knew
he didn't have time to come into that creek after me,
and we just looking at each other.

Speaker 7 (59:44):
You better get out of that creek, You better get out,
You better come here and talk to me. As your
father said, uh, He's like, I'm taking everything out of
your room, and I was just like, okay, great, because
you're not going to be there when I get back,
you know.

Speaker 6 (59:56):
So that part when I you know, we had this
release ship for a very long time, and when I
did see the episode, I felt that pain on the
other side of it where he felt the pain as
the adult leaving the child, you know. So it is
very emotional, I think for all.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Of the kids.

Speaker 4 (01:00:14):
So, you know, in tap of that character and the
character that I have had to be in my life
and I missed those moments now of being there for them.
It's an emptiness that I gobbled with every day you
did what Why wasn't I there? But I was raised

(01:00:35):
of a mindset of my mother was about providing, and
so she would often say to me, you know, we'd
be sitting around our tenement building and you know, we
have one of his little pop belly stole and she
say to me, Bunny because she couldn't pronounce Benjamin, and
mounderstood this. She couldn't have pronounced Benjamin. I look at

(01:00:57):
my father. They always called me Joe or she called
me bunny. Bunny. If all we have was a donut,
you need the donut the whole.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Oh wow.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
So you know that was the way I was raised.
And so when this opportunity of show business fell upon me,
all I knew was to do is provide and got
caught up in the madness. Listen, all you read about
all this in the book, but it's about that missing
part which I grobble.

Speaker 6 (01:01:29):
With as a daughter. I don't want him to feel
guilty about it because I'm very privileged. You know, I
don't have college loans. You know that was all paid
for it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
I was going to afford the work to the mental
work in the council end too.

Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
Yes, yes, and my my father and I have had
this tremendous journey and it's heavy on my heart that
he has this guilt.

Speaker 5 (01:01:53):
But the bar the fact that j'all was sharing this,
I just got to say it. I know Amre is
feeling this too, like this is the result of having
a black boomer daddy, Like this trauma is not You
are not alone in this thing, understand father's trauma. And
because the beautiful thing to me as I look at

(01:02:13):
you guys and beautiful daughters, where we are now, where
you are with him, wherever he goes, and how you
take care of him.

Speaker 6 (01:02:20):
Is just along with my sister Karan Kan.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
I'm sorry, I guess.

Speaker 7 (01:02:23):
Yeah, likea she's out there somewhere the way the girls
take care of you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
How many children in total?

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
I had four five children. I had an Najah whom
I lost an automobile accident, and my son. Okay, so
I have I have three daughter, beautiful daughters, and I'm
so honored and privilege. Honest, I'm blessed. I'm truly blessed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Yeah, daughters, take care of you different right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
Recommend the people who were handling me in my business.
I mean, I've had some messed up people in my
life who did not even think about my children. I
was in rehab in Utah place called Circu and I
had had my bow. I've had my bous and alcohol

(01:03:17):
and drugs and things, and I'd find my last cleanup
and I'll never forget. Ron and my wife came up
for counseling and this has never happened, and I never
forget her sitting there and saying, you do not like
what it's like being the wife of ben Vereen. And

(01:03:39):
she said there were times that I have to go
through his pockets to find money to pay for my
baby Steed. I hit the ceiling. I had no idea
the robbery had been happening to my children. And I
looked at it. I said, never mind me my babies.

(01:04:02):
Why didn't you go up and say where excuse the expression,
are the effing books? I want to see them books?
Why are my babies? Why didn't I have the book
to my husband's pockets to buy money? And I'm busting
my ass not spending time with my babies. Keep them

(01:04:22):
yachts and houses and things like that. That's another part
of this interview, but one another day. That's the whole book.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
When when is this book coming out?

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Opening next ten months? In the title thank you for
the Journey, I say that you know. Some people ask
me you know? You say you know? So we Oh God,
you're such a legend. I say thank you for receiving both.

(01:04:55):
For you, I would not be here. I would not
have this journey. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be
here talking to the old question. Well, mm hmm, you see,
so thank you for the journey.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Usually when our listenership comes to this show, it's more
factual things than like a person's story. I want to
I want to no no, no, no, no no no no
no no no no no. I apologize in advance. Look,
I have a lot of tense, speed and brown shoe questions.

(01:05:28):
I wanted to know what it was like winning for
Pippin or Bob Foster. He was like all these things
that you've been through. But for me, this is a
way more important story, the totality of your career achievements.
And yes, I do implore everyone to get this book.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Man, I'm just damn yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
I wanted to ask about Al Perryman and Dan You're
right questions.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Yeah, we can.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Still ask them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Let's rapid fire, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:06:00):
So, so, Ben, can you talk about because we talked
about black dance back in like the sixties and seventies,
and you talked about how you know, it wasn't a
thing where you would see us on those stages on TV,
but there were so My father as well in New
Yorker of Your Age, and he too is an artist,
photographer and a drummer, and he took a lot of
photos of the black dancers of that time, and I
just wanted you to speak about like he spoke about

(01:06:22):
Al Perryman, and he spoke about just this black dance scene.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
And I've seen.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
These beautiful photos of the black dancers going to the
park where a Mere shot his documentary, And so can
you just.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
Talk about how and then you kind of see it when.

Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
You watch the Wiz and you see all this black
dance at the end, you know, brand new day and
you see all these dancers of that time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Can you just George, come on, George face. We had
you know, we had them on the show.

Speaker 4 (01:06:46):
George Face.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Yes, Michael Peters, come on, let's go.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
We'll talk about Michael Peters. Mike. You know, I see
he was saying, you know, this year, I was I've
been watching what they call it, not Instagram, you know,
young people in general, this stuff you work. But anyway,
I'm watching all this and then now finally the recognizing
that Michael Jackson is a product of Michael Peters beat

(01:07:11):
it really. I mean, I mean before, I mean he
was doing all that Motown stuff, but then he met
Michael Peters and broke out the whole New Moonwalking and
all these thriller beat it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Glass was Lester Wilson also part of that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
Wilson was the foundation for all of us. At Bernie's
Johnson's dance studio after school, we would go by Jerry Grimes,
Mister Emsley, Michael Peters, Lorraine.

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
Fields, Oh, Debbie Allen shout around too.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
Yeah, we all go to Bernie's Johnson and there was
Lester Wilson with Chief Bad Flaying Kunga and we'd be
dancing and he would he would give us. Oh he
was such a smooth, beautiful dancer. Bout Fossey loved. That's
the Wilson. He talked about Lester Wilson, all of his

(01:08:10):
moves and how liquid and fluid he was. I looked
at him, Mi, he was so fluid, so beautiful. Oh,
I mission mess.

Speaker 6 (01:08:20):
I was slad.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
We die so angry. It's so foolish. But anyway, yeah,
Lester Wilson and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad he
had documented all of us. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:08:35):
So you're telling a story about people, and I just
I don't want them to ever forget the power of
Judah Jamison. Since we recently lost her. What do you
what comes to mind when we say Judith jameson.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
Stature of beauty and fluidity. She was the cream oh
oo talking about cry. She cried for all of us.
Oh I love Judith. I'm glad she came through my life.

(01:09:05):
That's sit in the studio, just watch her. Oof.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
So this journey in your life you are right now
and working on what is it that you want us
to know, especially in terms of you being in your
instructor phase, your your choreography phase, your your your director phase.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
What is it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
What is it that you want This particular generation, those
born in the nineties him in the two thousands.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
Attached to the rhetoric that you're human is listening to
always know there's a power within you, greater than that
outside of you, and stay in touch with who you've
come to this planet to be. You'll get all the
rhetoric from education, edumacation, and you'll get all the rhetoric

(01:09:59):
from society what they're going through, but you understand that
within you it's a core of creation and whatever you
need to do to stay there, get there, get there
and breathe that in and breathe that out. For all
of us. That's what I want you to do. That's

(01:10:22):
what I want you to know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Where you are, well, I'm good, I have a good day.

Speaker 5 (01:10:30):
It's such a it's such I just gotta say, it's
a blessing to be a child of My dad calls
you guys, the last of the new children, this generation.
You know, I said to Kabara into Charlie Melvinmore's daughter,
I was like, you guys are of a generation of
creation that was just broke all of these barriers for
people and also New Yorkers, and so the poet just

(01:10:51):
the rhythm of when you just talk is like unmatched
and we can never lose it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Just a treasure. I just we honor you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
This is a great emotional episode of Quest Love Supreme Sorority.
I thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Kabar and Ben for really really being open because oftentimes
artists are taught to not overshare or that stuff. But
I think now, especially where we are, yes, it's about
honesty about who we are and what we're going through
and things aren't perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
And I think you know, I too thought I was alone.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
I am also a son of a traveling musician father
and mother that had to go through the same thing.
And you know you often think that you're isolated, but
I really this is not just lip service. This moment
right now, me speaking to you like I needed to
have this conversation and I love you too for it,

(01:11:49):
and thank.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
You very much for that. It's an awesome episode, so.

Speaker 5 (01:11:54):
Net of a kabar in that way, I'm here too,
because Peers, you're right, you're not alone exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:12:00):
Yeah, I'm surprised we didn't run into each other up
on the borsch Felts.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
No, you know what, it's weird. I felt as though
you and I have crosspaths. I know we had common
like friends in common and whatnot. Yet this this is
this is great to meet you this way, and you
know I appreciate it. On behalf of a on Sugar
Steve and and Unpaid Bill and Layah Kabara, Ben Veren.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
Thank you very much. This is Quest Love Supreme and
we will see you on the next go.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
Thank you, hey, Thank y'all for listening to Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 5 (01:12:34):
This podcast is hosted by an Afro a mouth, an
engineer and a man with too many jobs aka a
mere Quest Love Thompson.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
Why you, Saint Clair Douga, Steve Mandell and unpaid Bill Sherman.
The executive producers, well get paid the big bucks.

Speaker 5 (01:12:49):
A mere quest Love Thompson, Sean g and Brian Calhoun
asked them for money. Produced by the people who do
all the real work Ritny Benjamin, Jake Payne and.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
Yes, why are You St? Claus?

Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
Edited by another person who does the real work, Alex Conroy.

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
And those who approved the real work. Produced for iHeart
by Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.