O'Jays interview part 2

there was a song called "lipstick traces" that's right yeah the first national hobo on the right it was just a local hit and and around burnt out Myrtle Beach and beach areas lone hobo he was a top 40 hobo only for men, you really have a check that I don't I have no trace of lipstick, yes, I think it was really the first national hit that really made numbers and noise, yes, yes, and they gave it to him first, he didn't want to sing it, That's when I made my debut in the league, well, because it was necessary. a special kind of voice to say that song, I couldn't feel the song, I couldn't feel it, no matter what I did, I couldn't feel it, he jumped on it, you know, and then wait, the ironic

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of this is that yeah , he's saying it, it became a top 40 hit and then we got to Philly and we and we, we played in Philly, his tooth hurts, his jaw swells up as much as his head and it's so over the top, wait, hold it down . with so much pain and he is in a desperate situation here and now we still have to do the show, he can't do the show, ironically who has to sing has the same as that dog, since I hate him, I hated him, he has me spoiled.

This scholarship run is something that you know when we go home and play there at least once a year, we go there and play because you always want to come home and say, well, look what we've done, what we did. and now you guys want everyone to come out and see you and all your old friends and all that, so we would come home and we would see the property and we would see a lot of our friends that never left. the city limits never went to Akron or went to Cleveland and we recognized this as an educational problem, these people were not being educated and we felt that it was okay, we have to try to help, we have to try to at least help the young people.

At least try to get some kind of that so that they educate themselves and see what the world is like, to see that there are other things besides knowing the street and besides fighting and shooting at each other, and that's how we started this scholarship thing. and it's been a growth process, it's been a growth process and it's getting better, it's still in a process where you know it's hard work, man, and you have to dedicate yourself to it to achieve it because not everyone has your passion for doing things for free and trying to get corporate America and all the big guys with a lot of money to come and help you, you immediately think that when you're doing something good for other people, other people are just going to jump on the bandwagon and be there for you. and just donate your money and take out your pockets and fill the money, that's not the case, you have to go around and you know you know, just use, we are big, yeah, you really have to humble yourself. and yet, I suppose people write whatever.

I'll take a bucket, that's all you have. I'll take that and and for that reason, although it still is, I mean, everyone knows it at this point and even in previous years the economy is not what it should be or what we would not like certainly what we would like to see, but they will give and they will give for that

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icular cause and and and in that situation so that we get everything we can and you know what they say about taking whatever is negative to make chicken soup and a good chicken soup, we take it and make chicken soup with it and it's good and it's a great cause and we've gotten some of the dignitaries from Canton to help the city. council chamber of commerce the mayor mayor Steve Perry, who now runs the Football Hall of Fame and the people on the outside said absolutely imposed, yes, from how back, yes, a lot of people, yes, Harvin at the Arvin Meritor Yes, yes, it's a pleasure.

In his temple, he makes the backs of trucks and everything they've done, they've been trying to use Nike with roller bearings, they've been fabulous, I don't know, just yeah, and the result is that now we've really established a relationship. positive. We are giving money to children to get scholarships and we are going to try to increase it. Let's work harder on it. We did a concert at Closet Stadium Fawcett, where the American Football Hall of Fame is located. gang and him, yes, and we oversold it, okay, and the expenses were tremendous, yes, I never knew that an apartment could cost seventy thousand to buy the facilities of a house, as the years went by, it got bigger and people started coming out, you know, promoters got involved.

The Quinn Perrys, you know, got involved in this and I and I really and I after seeing 27,000 people with six or seven thousand people still trying to get in, you know, it looks like it's going to be something phenomenal. Do you know what I mean because of the scholarship? Me and you know what let me tell you this quickly: it's worth it when you see those kids and you see those kids and they accept those funds and they accept that scholarship and they get rid of one they tear up or they cry, you can't write a script, you know , I mean, you can't say, hey, man, cry on cue, they're actually happy to get it and not only are there little kids, but the seniors get scholarships, so when you see that.

It makes it all worth it, you know, I mean beyond the celebrities, it makes it all worth it and when the three of us are up there and I mean we give them those scholarships, it just sums up the whole weekend and what was everything. It's worth it, you know what I mean, yeah, all the begging and all the humiliation of yourself and everything you know. Amen, let's go. I need your help. You know, like a friend of mine, Green Bay Packers football player Willie Davis. Did you come to like a great champion and you know these are people who don't have to do these things but they do them and that's who we are?

I'm so grateful that it reached the magnitude that it reached in the last year and then you just breathed in after the end of the day you say well okay, I begged, I pleaded, I did it, we did it, we did it, people really have heart, yeah , it really does, I mean, you get it. them, you stand behind them and they promise you things and sometimes they can't give you everything they promised, but they come through our friend Tony King, he came to them for the security job, yeah, yeah, favorite song , my favorite song, the first half.

I love traitors my favorite song is a funny story that goes with that they gave me the paper with the lyrics and I wanted to put it on the nightstand and a plane went down and of course they say then I fell to the ground, yes, I didn't like it, I threw it on the ground. I've been stuck with that since 1972, we absolutely should have won that one they put us in a category with, ha ha yeah, dance and call them. groups yeah, yeah, we should have won, we screamed, damn murder, Barry White got up and left, he said, come on, come on, Dean, come on, the biggest moment, man, I was so happy for Eddie and Walter, I mean, I was so happy, man, you know?

I say that because I know the blood, sweat and tears they put into this, you know, so I thought it was and I don't take it back, it's going to go into a capsule and sink into the ground. I can't take it back. I can not stand it. I loved. I got it once. That was my biggest mistake. I used it to encourage. I can't take it anywhere. Nothing. BT Awards Now. I love that man. I mean, this was one of those days where we couldn't write this. Better, I mean, why do I know you don't want to?

I mean, Michael passed away and we had great memories of Michael, but a Mendham man OJ, what we did for the BT award, people was a good time. I love music, it was really the beginning of disco music. That's where it started, from there, the hi-hat, the thousand rhythms, the pedals, that's where also, if you listen, if you go back there, you discover that they were, they were very key in the disco era.