Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. Scotty Barnhart, professor of jazz trumpet and jazz studies at Florida State University and director of the county BC Orchestra. My mother, I get my music talents directly from her. She was a great vocalist. She's a piano and played piano in Oregon and hearing her singing around the house all the time and listening to her and her choir at church every Sunday. I grew up in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, with Dr. King and everybody. So, Daddy King was the minister when I was growing up. And there were four choirs there. So, every Sunday I got to hear a completely different style of music, whether it be classical music with my mom's choir or gospel music with the ML King choir or the children's choir that I was in at one point or the male chorus. So, that's kind of how I got really deeply into music because I was exposed to it every week. I would have to say, Winton, Marcellus. I mean, Winton, man, this guy, when I saw him when I was 17 years old, he was playing on a tonight show, Johnny Carson. And for the next three minutes, I sat there and watched this guy play the trumpet like I had never heard or seen in my life. And then he looked to be close to my age. That's what got me, you know? And he has been such an instrument because he's an example of how, if you really pay attention to the talent that you have and you pay attention to trying to get better and with a serious work ethic, the sky is the limit. And so for him to be an inspiration to me and for he and I to talk often, he's definitely been my greatest influence. The older I get now, the more I realize how fortunate I was to have grown up in Ebenezer and my mom exposing us to these people and these great intellectuals, these great civil rights, activists and pioneers and it's just affected who I am as a person. They're a part of me. Scotty Barnhart, musician. You're listening to voices that inspire.