Tell us about your growing up years, where you born and raised, your life as a child.

I was born in Snow Hill, a little country town in Alabama. My grandfather, William James Edwards, had been a disciple of Booker T. Washington at Tuskeege Institute and had founded a school there…on several acres of land the land owner had awarded him. There was timber on the land, so he began the school in a log cabin and it grew.

He'd go North to speak to different philanthropists to ask for funds for the school….On one occasion, he spoke to Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Carnegie wrote him out a check for $10,000 right then and there.

All of us went to that school. It closed in the 1950s due to integration.

My family was warm and loving and devoted to education, and also devoted to our culture and to music. My mother Alberta Grace Edwards Lee, was a child prodigy in piano, and when my grandfather would go North in the summers to study at Harvard University to better himself, he took her along and she studied piano privately at the New England Conservatory of Music.

My father was Arnold W. Lee, who'd also graduated from Tuskeege, as an engineer. He was also a musician, he played cornet, and was a bandmaster. In our home there was always music—Chopin, Brahms, Negro spirituals, jazz—and opera on the radio.

There were seven Lees: five boys and two girls…All of us went to college…and I'd say everyone in the immediate family has made contributions, and most—brothers, sisters, cousins—are in some way educators.

You grew up in the “ Deep South ” in the late ‘40s. How do you think coming of age in the South then influenced who you are today?

I grew up during the worst possible racist times in the South…That all came to an end with the work of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Growing up then and there affected all of us—greatly. We may have been restricted in what we could do and where we might go, but we were never restricted in our minds because of our family. We knew that we had worth…Our grandfather was our example: he was the greatest man around in that area.

And we didn't grow up with any hatred because there were so many good white people, including the people who'd helped my grandfather found the school and who continued helping it financially.

Growing up, who do you think influenced your outlook the most?

You know, I can't say that it was one person. It was my mother and immediate family there in the Snow Hill community.

How and when did you get started singing?

Singing was part of our lives growing up. My sister, Consuela, and I had a group and sang all the time. I was a bit intimidated by my sister.

When I went to college I majored in English and minored in voice. But I was always over in the music department, for choir or whatever.

When I came to Cleveland, I was able to get into the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Robert Shaw, the chorus's director, liked my voice and encouraged me to study, so I started studying at the Cleveland Music School Settlement with Burton Garlinghouse and later Pauline Thesmacher.

Around 1970 my brothers, Bill and Cliff, my sister and I formed a jazz-folk ensemble, The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe (the Lee family's great grandfather and great grandmother) and did concerts, mostly on college campuses… One time—at a college (when I was singing a high B just below high C) all the house lights came on. We still joke about that.

In the mid-70s, I started doing The Black Arts on WCLV. Radio is wonderful. People can hear you and learn things, but they don't know what you look like.

Then, when I tried out for the soprano solo spot at the Fairmount Presbyterian Church, I got it. Then I developed a program on spirituals, that I called Black Song. I'd sing the spiritual and explain it. Rosa Lobe was my accompanist.

I guess you'd say I sort of grew into it [singing] because the music was always there. I'd do other things, but I'd always be drawn back to the music. I guess I'd seen it as an avocation, because I loved it so.

And I made the transition from student to teacher at the Settlement, too.

How did that happen?

One of the teachers was leaving, and my teacher (Pauline “Polly” Thesmacher), suggested I take over her students. I wasn't a voice teacher, I was a librarian. But she said: ‘Number one: you are a good singer; number two, you know what good singing sounds like; and number three, you love people. You will be a good teacher.'

Then she recruited my husband Howard to convince me to do it. They ganged up on me. Finally I said OK and I've been teaching on Saturdays there for 25 years.

This past year I had 7 students, and I love teaching, especially the students from the Cleveland School of the Arts. My accompanist complimented me once on how good I am with the students. She said I mothered them.

I'm teaching the students their musical basics. What they learn from me and with me, they take into their future with them…My hope is that I'm giving them not just the basis for further study but also the basics to be a good person, too, in college or on their own.

You sing everything from opera to spirituals. What's your favorite genre of music, and why?

I love jazz—Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae—but I don't feel I'm a jazz singer. I don't improvise that well. So I'd say it's classical music, into which I think the spiritual falls because I don't differentiate between them. Still, if I had to pick, I'd says it's “La Boheme,” works by Puccini, spirituals, Fauré's art songs—those are the things I love the most. I'm devoted to preserving the spiritual. I produced my own album, "Spirituals," with pianist William Appling accompanying me.

You mentioned that everyone in your family went to college. Where did you go?

I was always a good student: I loved my studies and books, and I had a librarian in high school who really influenced me, so I decided to be a librarian, but I wanted to pursue music, too, so I chose Hampton Institute.

I graduated second in my class, and I've always blamed that on the “C” I got in swimming. [Laughs] I couldn't help it, I was afraid of the water.

Is Hampton where you met your husband, Howard?

Yes. I met him in the choir. We graduated in the same class and we were engaged when we graduated.

I went to Cleveland to get my library science degree and he went back home to Detroit , to get his MA in speech. We got married in Detroit after I'd gotten my library degree [at Case Western Reserve University ], and my first job as a librarian was in Detroit . Later, we came to Cleveland where I worked at several branches of the Cleveland Public Library and then went to Glenville High School as head librarian. Meanwhile, Howard, who passed away in 2002, established the Speech and Hearing Department at Cleveland State University. The last 10 years of his tenure there he was director of Black Studies where he founded the Jazz Heritage Orchestra and established the Lecture Arts and Media Series, which is now named after him. Today the African American Cultural Center there bears his name, too.

We moved into our home in East Cleveland in 1980.

Both you and your husband were very concerned with social and cultural issues. What are some of the projects and programs that you worked together on…and why those particular projects?

I'm not sure whether you'd say we were involved in social things as much as educational things. Education was the thing we really worked on. We were both teachers—I was at Glenville and he was at Cleveland State .

We were very involved in the Hampton Alumni Association. When we came to Cleveland , the fund-raising for scholarships wasn't—well—what it could have been, so we decided to try to help there. I was the chair of the fund-raising committee and Howard was chair of the scholarship committee…We did that for 35 years, and I'm sure over the years we helped raise over $250,000 for scholarships to Hampton and I know that we helped over 100 kids go there.

I retired from that after Howard passed.

You are probably best-known to Clevelanders as “the voice” of radio station WCLV's Black Arts and Artslog . How did you get started doing these programs?

I started Black Arts in 1976, and Artslog three years later.

I love classical music, so WCLV was practically the only station I had my radio tuned to. But in listening to it I noticed that they did not have a program devoted to Black music and artists.

I'd never met him, but I called Bob Conrad [the station's founder president and on-air-commentator] and said I thought it would be a good idea to have a program featuring Blacks' contribution to music. He said, ‘Oh, but we do feature Black artists,' and I said, ‘Yes, but not on a regular basis.' Then he said, ‘Come in and let's talk about it.' So I went down to Terminal Tower [where the station was at that time] and we talked.

He told me to tape a trial program, and I put together an hour-long program [with music and commentary] on Jessye Norman. He thought it was good enough to give me a 6-month trial on the radio.

The first The Black Arts program—on Leontyne Price—aired in May of 1976.

A couple of years later he [Conrad] asked me if I'd be interested in doing a program focused on local arts organizations. He gave me the title ‘fine arts reporter' and Artslog started airing in 1979.

Now, I go out to the station every Thursday and tape the shows, but I do all the planning and work for the programs here [at home]. I listen to music and get it planned out for The Black Arts program in my music room [which is filled with records, tapes and CDs] and I do research for both programs in my office upstairs.

In your almost 30-year career on radio, you have interviewed hundreds of celebrities. Who was your hands-down favorite?

You are going to hate this answer, but I don't have a favorite. I accept each person for who they are. I do remember some interviews more than others, though, especially one with [trumpeter] Wynton Marsalis, but not because of the interview itself. He'd gone to a Descendants of Mike and Phoebe concert in New Orleans when he was a teen…[and] the main lyrics from “John Coltrane” stuck with him. When he saw me, he started singing that phrase. That made that interview unique and memorable for me.

Another favorite was Jessye Norman, when she was out at Blossom. And [soprano] Grace Bumbry, when she was there, too.

But that gets me back to what I said: It's hard to say who is my favorite is.

As an on-air interviewer, who was your worst interview?

I can't really say there was one. When you are talking to people for the kind of show I do, you are asking them to talk about themselves, and about something they are passionate about. And—well—I go into every interview very prepared with research and questions.

Besides, they've agreed to do the interview so they want to be there. And, these are all taped interviews. The horror stories, if they do happen, get edited out.

You are past retirement age—and still going strong. Are you thinking about retiring any time soon?

You know, every once in a while, I have to check a box that says “65 and older.” But after I check it I don't think about age anymore.

You are as old as you feel. And I'm doing things that I truly love and I'm going to continue doing them until I can't anymore. Especially since I lost my husband.

Having things that I was already involved in—the radio shows and teaching voice at the Music School Settlement and being on the board of Cleveland Institute of Music and being a member of the Cleveland Arts Prize Committee—was a real emotional life-saver. Those things have kept me very much involved, which is important because I'm a people person and I enjoy helping people and using the ability I have to coordinate things—like the master class in the Negro Spiritual I coordinated this April for Cleveland State 's Black Studies Department.

I don't want to retire from what I'm doing because all these things have helped keep me involved and active.

You are sitting on a lifetime of great stories, and you are very articulate. Is there a book in your future?

I don't see that happening right now. You have to be able to carve out quiet time to write, especially a book. And with all that I'm doing now—preparing for each individual student's lesson each week; doing the research and reading for the scripts for The Black Arts programs and preparing for the interviews for Artslog ; running back and forth to the meetings for my volunteer work—well, I just don't have that kind of time.

[Laughs] I'm well-organized—that's what librarians are famous for—but I'm not organized to write a book.

You are definitely aging successfully. What are you doing to stay healthy, active, and “connected” to the community?

The staying “connected” we've talked about.

As for staying healthy, well, I've never smoked, and not just because I'm a singer, but because it's so unhealthy. And I take care of myself. I have high blood pressure, so I take the proverbial ‘water pill.' And I do some exercises—mostly in the morning—to help me stay limber. My doctor wants me to do more walking, but I'm up and down the steps in this four-story house every day, so I figure I do enough walking.

With regard to diet, I don't eat anything special. And I like iced tea, lemonade and soft drinks.

Some technicians at the Cleveland Clinic told me, when they were doing an EKG, that I had good genes. And, my mother and grandmother lived into their middle 90s.

And I think I have a positive outlook and attitude towards life—and a sense of humor.