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• Ms. Raitt's official site
• Ms. Raitt in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Article on Ms. Raitt
• Rhythm & Blues Foundation

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Tavis: I am pleased with a capital "P" to welcome Bonnie Raitt to this program. The talented musician is a nine-time Grammy winner. Just released her eighteenth album, her first in over three years -- about time, Bonnie. In 2000, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and last year took part in the Vote for Change Tour leading up to the presidential election. The new CD is called "Souls Alike". Later on, she'll perform the first song from the disc called "I Will Not Be Broken". But first, here's Bonnie Raitt in concert performing one of her biggest hits.

Tavis: (Laughter) I love it. Bonnie Raitt, how you doing?

Bonnie Raitt: I'm great. I'm so glad to see you.

Tavis: I'm glad to see you. Glad to have you on.

Raitt: I'm thrilled.

Tavis: One of the great things about doing a TV show is that every now and then you get somebody on who you really, really want to talk to and I'm so glad to have you here.

Raitt: Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

Tavis: For my other guests listening and watching, I probably shouldn't have said that (laughter), like I don't want to talk to them. I love talking to everybody; but your fans, people's work; it's always nice to have them on. I'm blushing already, so forgive me for that.

Raitt: Hey, I'm so glad you like my stuff.

Tavis: Like is an understatement. I love your stuff. I grew up in Indiana listening to Bonnie Raitt year in and year out and I was so happy for you, so happy that I cried, in 1990, the year you won those Grammies for "Nick of Time". I was so happy for you.

Raitt: Oh, man. I got so much. It's still the gift that keeps on giving. You know, I come up to people and they go, "That was such a great moment" and I said, "How do you think I felt?" You know, thank you so much.

Tavis: How did it feel, though? I mean, after having put out -- I was teasing with this gorgeous red hair you have. The producer on our show, Holly, who's responsible for your being here in part -- Holly has red hair as well. I was saying when this redhead put out her first CD, my redhead, Holly, wasn't even born yet (laughter).

Raitt: Oh, yeah, girl.

Tavis: So how did it feel all those years putting out records and the massive public didn't know who you were until 1989 as if you hadn't been around?

Raitt: Well, you know, the thing about being a kind of a cult artist is you really have more freedom when you don't have to worry -- if you're not trying to be at the top of the heap all the time. It's not so much pressure to keep it up. So I had my core following that stayed with me and, you know, I probably could have changed the way I looked and gotten a big high-powered manager, but I grew up in a show business family. I didn't care about the short run. I cared about doing this great job for a living for the long run, so I slow and steady built up my following and never expected those Grammies to come like that. I don't think anybody did, and it was like a Cinderella story.

Tavis: But when it rained, it poured (laughter).

Raitt: Man, it was really exciting to be able to have that much clout, for having musicians around me, get paid more and do stuff for my causes. Man, it was a blast. I'm not going to lie.

Tavis: We're going to discuss all that stuff in a second, the causes and the band, and you guys are going to perform for us a little bit later. But since you went there, about the family you were raised in. We all know your father, God rest his soul, John Raitt --

Raitt: Thank you, thank you.

Tavis: A great American, great talent. You mentioned a moment ago that you grew up in a show biz family, so you knew from an early age that, once you started doing this, it was about the long haul, that you'd be judged by your body of work and not by one or two records. What else did you learn growing up in that? That's some sage advice.

Raitt: Well, my dad had his hits of "Carousel" in the 1940's and "Pajama Game" in the 1950's and then he toured on the road in the regional areas of this country taking "Oklahoma" and those shows in twenty-five consecutive years, taking it not to Broadway, but out where the people are, and he was still singing at eighty-eight years old when he passed. I looked at him and John Lee Hooker and Sippy Wallace and all the people I admired. They didn't seem to be getting any less great just because they got older and I set my sights on, you know, having a kind of career that was not based on chart hits. That was really something I took a lesson from my dad on and here I am thirty-five years later still doing it.

Tavis: Somebody said the other day that it would be greater later. It would be greater later.

Raitt: You got that. I am a testimony to a second chapter and I got more chapters in me.

Tavis: Tell me about this particular CD, "Bonnie Raitt: Souls Alike". I mentioned that it's been three years, but a lot's happened to you over these last three years. What you been doing the last three years?

Raitt: Well, for starters, when you come out with a record like we did "Silver Lining" in 2002, you know, it's like a year and a half to tour, so we did over a hundred dates in the states and then we went to Europe twice. Went to Australia and New Zealand. Got to give them the message and tell them what the other part of America is thinking.

Tavis: (Laughter) Yeah, the other part.

Raitt: Keep the old school soul music and blues. You know, I'm really proud of the mix in music that I do and I think that the artists that I -- the reason that I called my album "Souls Alike" is because I wanted to show that this band of musicians I have and my co-producer, Chad Blake, and the songwriters whose songs I do, these are brilliant people working that deserve to have a little bit of appreciation for how much they're able to get what I need to say about myself. Sometimes it's like holding up a mirror and they show me stuff about myself I wouldn't have been able to write.

So in the interim years, I was just song hunting, doing a little political activism, traveling around. On the downside, I dealt with a lot of family illness, so, you know, it was a time to really come close. Our family came around my brother's brain cancer and I lost both my parents in the same year this last year. So in making this record, it was especially a poignant time.

Tavis: You say poignant, was it all therapeutic? This is something you wanted to do? Something that you fought against doing, but it came out anyway? How did you process what you were going to write and/or perform and put on this CD in the context of that personal challenge?

Raitt: Well, that was kind of a sideswipe, that stuff, because I think you mature in your own way. You know, with the ups and downs that come to you as you go through life. But my folks' illness, I pretty much decided what songs were going to go on the record. I was really here in Los Angeles attending to my dad's worsening condition and actually it was therapeutic to work with the guys in the band, but I knew that I needed some time to heal and be there for him, so I postponed the release of it until the fall. You know, how many more Grammies do I have to win? At some point, you got to pay attention to your personal life and there's nothing more important than family.

Tavis: Speaking of family, why is it that nobody seems to know or believe that you are from Los Angeles?

Raitt: You know, I'm proud to be from Los Angeles.

Tavis: (Laughter) But nobody knows it or believes it. Not Bonnie Raitt, she ain't from Los Angeles.

Raitt: Well, that's because I love southern music and R&B and soul music and roots music of all kinds. I mean, not that the North or the Midwest or the West had any deficit of that. It's just Lowell George, Rye Cooter, some of my favorite musicians, Jackson Browne, we're all from Los Angeles. You know, something you get to get into and get over, but there's a wealth of musical influences here as well.

Tavis: I raise that in part because -- I mean, not to cast dispersions on my friends here in California. I've been here since 1985 or so -- but I think it's true, though, that a lot of folk in California, because they think they live in the best and greatest state in the country, they don't really venture out often. A lot of Californians don't venture out. Is that true?

Raitt: Well, for me, the heartland -- I mean, New Orleans, Indiana, Ohio -- you know, people ask me what my favorite place to play is. I've been spending all these years on the road and I still haven't picked a favorite place.

Tavis: Yeah. Well, when I told people I was from Indiana when I got here, that's like "Where is that?" (Laughter) Californians don't want to experiment and go out and try exploring.

Raitt: That's true, really.

Tavis: I mean, California's a great state. I think when you're born and raised here, you got the beaches, you got the mountains, you got the sunshine, you got Hollywood. I mean, it really is a great place to live, witness my being here, but you really took it upon yourself to really get out.

Raitt: Well, that's my job. I got to keep moving. I mean, my dad was on the road all those years. You know, we got opening night every night and when you nail New Orleans, it's time to go to Baton Rouge the next night and then hit Texas. I'm a gypsy at heart and I couldn't stand staying here. I love California, but I wouldn't want to live here all the time.

Tavis: You still like this touring thing. I mean, to do as many dates as you do, you don't need the money, I take it, so you must love what you're doing.

Raitt: I love what I'm doing and I love my fans and I love making a difference. We raise a lot of money and consciousness on the road and help a lot of people cheerlead the troops. You know, bring a lot of people, give away information about alternative energy and stuff in the lobby and, you know, do receptions afterwards. Mostly, it's just great to eat like people in the south eat, eat like people in the northwest. You know, wherever you are, you take advantage of the nature and the people and the culture wherever you are, so it's never boring.

Tavis: Well, as nice and thin as you are, you couldn't have been eating too much food in New Orleans. If you were eating all the shrimp that I eat down there, you'd be a little bit bigger than that.

Raitt: I just got to make sure I got somebody chasing me a lot, that's all.

Tavis: (Laughter) Tell me. You spoke earlier of your activism and you are very much active, very active in a number of different causes. Where did that come from? It seems to me there's a certain risk in there that you could take being as active as you are, certainly on the political front, but you don't shy away from it.

Raitt: Well, I was raised, you know, in a Quaker family. We were very active in the peace movement, ban the bomb movement and the civil rights. We were very aware of that whole struggle in Selma and the Freedom Riders. I joined Snick when I was like thirteen and said, "What can I do? What can I do?"

Tavis: Bonnie Raitt and Snick. I love it.

Raitt: I'm telling you. You know, I just couldn't wait to get old enough to be a beatnik and be part of the action. So I came from a family that appreciated Pete Seeger and The Weavers and Woody Guthrie and, you know, Joan Baez was the reason I picked up the guitar. My entrance into the blues and a lot of folk music, which is where I came out, was protest marches and peace rallies and the kind of music where you did something to make a difference, so that's where I got it. I was born and raised with giving something back.

Tavis: So tell me about what happened when Joan Baez convinced you to pick up the guitar. You were, what, eight?

Raitt: Yeah, eight. You did your homework.

Tavis: Well, you know, some of it's homework and some of it's just being a fan of yours and knowing this stuff over the years, but the homework did augment my knowledge for the conversation, I hope. But tell me about being eight and picking up that guitar and what you remember about that.

Raitt: Well, I just -- I loved the sound of -- I knew that my dad's music, Broadway music, and my mother was a pianist, his as accompanist and music director, I knew that really wasn't for me, as much as I loved it. Folk music and rock and roll and Motown and the Beatles were the music of my time and I absorbed all of it. Bob Dylan, I just idolized these folks. But folk music was something I could do in my room for myself. I just played to entertain myself. I sat there and studied records --

Tavis: -- You taught yourself?

Raitt: Taught myself, but I listened to records and just tried to figure it out. When I heard these blues records, I said, what is that noise that they're playing? It sounds like somebody -- like a violin or -- my grandpa was a Methodist minister and he'd play a Hawaiian lap steel guitar. He played hymns. Then I figured out early on that you didn't need to learn the chords. If you just pulled the bar along the neck, you had an instant chord. I went, you know, that's for me. So I ended up picking up slide guitar because -- people think it's hard, but it's easy.

Tavis: How did you end up being so good at what you do with all of this exposure to this eclectic, this potpourri of music? I'm trying to figure out how you found yourself in there. How you found your style. I can see somebody hearing one thing over and over and over again and, as a result, they decide this is the kind of music I want to play or this is what I want to sing or what I want to perform. How did you figure it out, being exposed to so much stuff?

Raitt: You know, it was a gift of that time, I think. You know, on the radio, it wasn't so segregated. You'd have Conway Twitty next to The Ventures and then the Beatles and then Otis Redding would come on. You know, they played all kinds of stuff in the 1960's and I had been raised as a Broadway kid, but also loved, you know, gospel music and classical music, so I'm very eclectic.

People have said to me in the 1970's, you know, why don't you just pick a style and go for country or go for pop or rock or, you know, what is this record? Your records are all over the map. Then I ended up winning Album of the Year for the same mix in 1990. But for me, I would be bored just doing one thing. I don't know if I do every one equally well, but I just follow my muse and, you know, it goes to Ireland and Africa sometimes and comes around and mixed them all up together. I love it.

Tavis: (Laughter) And you make it all sound good, though.

Raitt: Thank you, thank you.

Tavis: That's the amazing part. Tell me. I'm fascinated about whether or not you love radio or hate radio, and I can see it either way. I can see you loving radio because radio played the heck out of "Nick of Time".

Raitt: You got that right.

Tavis: But before "Nick of Time", radio wasn't Bonnie Raitt territory necessarily, so you like radio? You don't like radio?

Raitt: You know, I've always had my niche and it's on the coast. You know, Boston to Atlanta, there's always been those progressive FM stations in the 1970's that played me and that's my core following that they call AAA now. It's a format that plays people over forty-five when the other ones won't and they don't categorize you or play album cuts. You know, that's what I grew up -- you know, I don't just want you to hear the hit. I want you to hear the other deep stuff, you know.

So there's things like satellite radio, Internet radio. There's a lot of television like this that lets people know my music's out there. So we need radio and they need us and when there's a little bit of ageism (cough) in the business in front of the microphone and all the other aspects where people sometimes get put out to pasture because they're not hip anymore, that gets tough to overcome. But you just have to be crafty and figure out where to go. You spend your money on TV advertising instead of on videos and do a lot of morning shows that ordinarily you wouldn't have been up for.

Tavis: Speaking of being put out to pasture, one of the things I admire about you again is the work that you have done and continue to do around making sure that those old R&B artists who have done their thing, those old blues artists who have done their thing, can still be taken care of financially in their old age. Talk about your work in that area.

Raitt: Well, I've worked with -- a bunch of people got together in 1998 and we formed the Rhythm & Blues Foundation which is basically spurred on by the Atlantic fortieth anniversary party when LaVerne Baker, Ruth Brown, Charles Brown, The Drifters, The Coasters -- it came out that really a lot of those people were still in a debit situation. They hadn't even made any royalty then. I used to buy their stuff on eight track and cassette and give music for Christmas, always wanted and it was great.

I'm giving Sam and Dave some money. Well, they still hadn't caught up to pay back. Their royalty rates were like one or two percent. So we got together and formed the Rhythm & Blues Foundation with an endowment from Atlantic, tried to get the rest of the industry to readjust royalty rates and get some financial -- not charity, but justice and some remuneration for these artists to whom we owe everything in this business.

I mean, the bedrock of all of popular music that has turned into such an incredible industry is rhythm and blues. We owe everything to these guys and, as a Caucasian person from California who happens to love the music, I can't take that paycheck and not share it because it's not the music that I created. So when I found out Ruth Brown never got paid, give me a pen. You know what I mean? So we did a lot and the foundation is doing really well. Kenny Gamble, the great soul producer, has welcomed us to Philadelphia --

Tavis: -- the Philly sound, Gamble & Huff.

Raitt: So we are now moved our offices to Philadelphia. We've got a great new office down on Broad Street and it's happening.

Tavis: You're just too nice. I love you too much. You are just too good. Tell me about -- I want to just throw some names at you and some concepts and just have you talk about them because I'm just fascinated about what you'd have to say about it. When I say Muddy Waters, what comes to mind?

Raitt: I'll tell you, people say -- there's a man, "I'm a man", but he said, "I'm a main" -- spelled like --you know, that guy was really the godfather of blues, you know, in terms of bringing Mississippi up to Chicago in the post-war era. If you're only going to have one blues guy -- and I've been asked this a lot -- if you could only have one, it's tough, but Muddy is the cat.

Tavis: You'd go with Muddy, yeah?

Raitt: I think so.

Tavis: When I say Ray Charles, what comes to mind?

Raitt: Well, a heartache that we lost him, but what an incredible body of work and what a great life he led. You know, to be there at the NAACP Awards with B.B. and Stevie and I singing with Ray in the front, sitting next to Julian Bond and this grabbing himself every time because they didn't tell him who was going to sing this part of the tribute. I'm so happy that he's gotten such recognition again. I just again wish, as I always do, that it had happened more when he was able to enjoy it.

Tavis: What is it about the blues that you think has made it so long-lasting? What's the legacy?

Raitt: Well, you know, as long as there's men and women and love --

Tavis: -- (laughter) there'll be blues.

Raitt: And sex and jealousy. I guess you're going to have some blues. You add a little liquor to it and a juke joint (laughter). You know, there are some things that are going to last the test of time and, as long as people try to get along with each other in a romantic way or get kicked around, there's going to be the release and the lure of that devil's music.

Tavis: I want to get back to this CD. Tell me what's on here, what you like about what's on this new CD.

Raitt: Well, that's a hard one because it's new. You know, it's like you just had the kid. I just hope -- I make my records for myself. I love my band. We did it together. There's a great range of material, but some of the newest stretching kind of stuff that my fans will be surprised about. There's no blues on there, but, you know, after seventeen records with lots of blues on there, I think maybe I've proved my point with that. So there's some loops and some interesting lyrical kind of thorny adult topics about what it's like to be at this point in my life. But you got to speak the truth. That's why soul music lasts.

Tavis: Yeah. But you're introspective in that way and you're a truth-teller in that way and a lot of our audience, with all respect, shy away from that. They don't want to put that much out there. You don't have a problem doing that, though.

Raitt: No. I think you got to go for the deep stuff. I mean, that's the stuff that makes you cry and inspires you. You know, there's a place for pop music and for escape and there's a place for going deep. You know, that's why I think I'll have a job when I'm in -- God willing, if my health and my voice holds up. If I'm singing the truth and digging deep and it's honest, then I think people are going to respond to it.

Tavis: Stevie Wonder has done that for years and you are on Stevie's next CD, which we are still waiting for.

Raitt: You know, he said, "Bonnie, give me a day. I got to turn it in in two days." I said, "I'm booked." He said, "You got to do it". Then I found out that's, what, three years?

Tavis: (Laughter) And we're still waiting.

Raitt: But, you know, I really had fun. And you know what he did? I said, "What do you want on this tune?" He said, "You know, like that 'Scratch My Back'." I said, "You talking about this Slim Harpo hit?" "Scratch My Back" was pretty obscure. He was talking about the Tremolo guitar. I mean, that means that guy's even hipper than I thought he was.

Tavis: He was pretty hip, but so is Bonnie Raitt. The new CD which came out early this week is called "Bonnie Raitt: Souls Alike", and not just earlier this week. I'm sure Bonnie did this by design. It came out earlier this week on my birthday. So happy birthday to Tavis from Bonnie Raitt with a new CD, "Souls Alike". Thank you, Bonnie.

Raitt: You are so welcome.

Tavis: (Laughter) I appreciate you doing that for me. I really appreciate that. Up next, Bonnie and her band will join us to perform the first single off the new CD, "I Will Not Be Broken". Stay with us. From her new CD, "Souls Alike", here is Bonnie Raitt and her band performing "I Will Not Be Broken". Enjoy, good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.