Former president Bill Clinton joined the Questlove Supreme podcast for an intimate conversation on jazz music in honor of Black Music Month.
In an exclusive first listen ahead of Wednesday’s episode, Clinton shares his early aspirations of becoming a musician with Team Supreme and pays homage to the greats that inspired him throughout his career. “I went to summer camp at university and i would sometimes play 12 hours a day,” Clinton said. “My gums were practically bleeding and I loved it.” Starting from when he was a kid growing up in Arkansas, Clinton recounts how he once looked at himself in the mirror at 16 years old and asked, “Will you ever be as good as Coltrane?” He goes on to say that he felt “conflicted” at the time, and wanted to be three things in life: A doctor, a musician, and “in politics.”
“I wanted to do three things in my life,” said Clinton. “I wanted to be a doctor that helped people that didn’t have access to healthcare… I wanted to be a musician, and I wanted to be in politics because I could see when I was a boy how much conflict there still was in America.”
Clinton also opens up about his friendship with Ray Charles, and the phone call he had with him weeks before Charles died in 2004. The two met via mutual friend Quincy Jones. Clinton recalls Charles traveling from central Florida to Seattle before recounting his personal interactions with him. “He called me and I knew he was sick,” says the former president. “It was pretty public by then. He didn’t talk about any of that. He had no interest in talking about that. He just said, ‘I’m just calling a few of my friends. People I want to talk to, you know, one more time. And we shot the breeze for like 20 minutes.”
“He knew he was going to die, but he didn’t want to talk about that. He wanted to just talk about life,” continued Clinton. “I think there were 12 or 15 people he just called that he wanted to talk to. I always thought he was something special.”
During the episode, Questlove stretches his existential muscles and ponders his own role as a commander in his industry and asks, “Why should we want to be a leader?”
“Most of life is a social experiment and a social experience,” Clinton replies. “It starts with how you keep score… If you keep score in a way that is at all other-directed, then if you get a chance to lead, you have to do it.”
Clinton’s conversation on art and leadership marks Black Music Month, which he officially signed into a bill in 2000 — calling for a formal acknowledgment and celebration of Black music’s contribution to and impact on American life and culture. The Clinton Foundation is an extension of his efforts to foster a new generation of leaders by inspiring citizen engagement and service through the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, which offers year-round educational and cultural programming and is home to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.