E-mail a friendDella Reese
airdate June 12, 2009
Della Reese has been a performer nearly all of her life. She began singing in church at age 6. At 18, she was the first performer to take gospel music to the Vegas casinos. She switched genres in the '50s and had three Top 40 hits. Television also beckoned. She was the first female host of The Tonight Show and the first Black woman with her own primetime variety show. Reese is also an ordained minister and author. Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she's a spokesperson for a national awareness campaign.
Singer-actress talks about the challenges of hosting a talk show at a time before her network and advertisers were ready for it. (3:29)
Full interview. (14:31)
Della Reese
Tavis: Always pleased to honor Della Reese on this program. The talented actress and singer has enjoyed a terrific career after being discovered by the legendary Mahalia Jackson at age 13. She, of course, has gone on to be Emmy-nominated for all kinds of good work, especially on the popular series, Touched by an Angel.
On June 20 here in Los Angeles at the Wilshire Theater, she's producing a concert event hosted by our good friend and funny guy, Tommy Davidson, featuring some great artists. Jon B, a reunion of S.W.V. - can't wait to hear them together again - and introducing a new artist named Noel. Tickets still available. Della Reese, always great to see you.
Della Reese: I love you.
Tavis: I love you back and you can't do nothing about it (laughter).
Reese: I don't want to do nothing about it.
Tavis: You're rocking that red. Look at you.
Reese: Thank you.
Tavis: Rocking that red. I want to talk about this concert and not just the concert, but you have throughout your career opened the doors for so many other people, always trying to promote and propel others as Mahalia Jackson did for you.
Reese: Well, somebody propelled me, you see, so you have to give something back.
Tavis: I want to talk about that in just a second. Before I do, though, Kim Logan, one of my producers and good researcher, shared something with me that I had to go look up myself to make sure - not that I don't trust Kim - but I had to go look this up. Trivia question. Neil, Kendall, none of you guys know this.
Who's the first woman, the first woman, to ever guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show? Not Joan Rivers. You got it. Della Reese, 1975. Della Reese guest hosted for Johnny Carson The Tonight Show. Your guests that night, Carroll O'Connor, Archie Bunker; Sandy Duncan; the artist Peggy Lee.
Reese: Yes.
Tavis: And you sat in for Johnny Carson.
Reese: Absolutely.
Tavis: You remember this, obviously.
Reese: I was doing The Della Show and he was marvelous because he didn't just want to quit and leave his audience without somebody that he thought would keep them as happy as he had kept them, so he was trying out people and I was doing The Della Show from the same studio in Burbank that he was doing.
He would come in and look at the show and look me over and he asked me would I come to New York. He was taping in New York at that time. He flew me to New York and I did four of his shows.
Tavis: That's a great piece of trivia, though (laughter).
Reese: Yes.
Tavis: Conan's got the gig now, but you were there in 1975 guest hosting.
Reese: Absolutely.
Tavis: Did you enjoy that? Did you ever think after doing it for three or four nights that maybe I want to do a talk show?
Reese: But I was doing a talk show. I love to say this. I was before Oprah.
Tavis: (Laughter) You were indeed. You were indeed.
Reese: So that's how he happened to know that I could do that. He tried out a lot of people until he found what he wanted.
Tavis: Yeah. What was - for those who were not around then or don't remember then - what was Della's show like?
Reese: It was very much like his show. I had a marvelous orchestra and I had guests and I had characters and animals and all kinds of things that was very much like his show and very much like Ed Sullivan's show. It was like a mixture of the two.
Tavis: Right. As a Black woman, this is '75 now and you were already on the air with Della. I mean beyond your gift and your talent, as a Black woman, how did you find your way on that stage? I mean, the stage of hosting your own talk show then?
Reese: You won't believe this, but there was a man named Mike Douglas. I don't know if you remember him.
Tavis: Great talk show host, absolutely.
Reese: Well, what he did, he had a host on with him that was on for a week and Woody Fraser was his director. I was working in Chicago at a club and Woody Fraser came in. I had hosted Mike Douglas's show many times and they were always pleased with what I did.
Woody Fraser came into this club where I was working and, for the first time, he saw my act and he asked me would I like to have a television show. I said, of course, I would. But Woody - you know, had to take him with a grain of salt.
Tavis: (Laughter) I got some friends like that.
Reese: You know, I said yes and forgot all about him. Three weeks later, he appeared at my door with a director, a set designer and a script for The Della Show, just like that, and we started to work.
Tavis: How were you accepted as a Black woman? To your point about Oprah now, we see how Oprah's accepted.
Reese: Everybody loved it except the people who were selling it and they will remain nameless. But I got remarks like this. They couldn't sell the show because my gums were blue. Oh, it's silent in here now, Father.
Tavis: Yes, it is.
Reese: They couldn't see the show because the major markets wouldn't accept me, which was not true because all through the south where they thought it wouldn't sell, I had the number one show. It was a racial situation and they just refused to do it. We did 297 shows.
Tavis: That's a lot of shows.
Reese: Absolutely. And they fought it all the way, that it was just too early for those people who had the power at that time to accept it. It just wasn't time. See, the nice thing, and I bless God for giving her that, Oprah came when the world was ready for it. I was there before they were ready.
Tavis: Kind of like the guy on your t-shirt. His timing is pretty good.
Reese: Perfect. Perfect timing.
Tavis: You sit here now and you tell the story so calm and so serenely and so sweetly, in fact, but how does one navigate a career where you were exposed to that kind of nonsense, that kind of hatred, that kind of racism?
Reese: I lived above that, you see. I had to. I had a child that I had to feed and I had to eat and I had to have a roof over my head. So I didn't have time for peoples' attitudes. I didn't have time for that.
Sometimes I went home at night and cried, but I got up the next morning and did what I had to do in order to live. I had to survive, and the need to survive can make you very strong and it did for me. It made me strong enough to go through all I had to go through to do what I had to do.
Tavis: How do you navigate past the bitterness, though?
Reese: Well, my mother, when I was young, helped me a lot. I was at school and this girl called me a nigger. I'd never heard the word before. But the way everybody giggled, I knew something was wrong with what she called me. So I went home and I asked my mother, "Am I a nigger?"
My mother said, "Are you black at heart?" I said, "No. I've been baptized. I'm a Christian." She said, "Well, you can't be baptized and a Christian and black at heart, and if you can't be black at heart, you can't be a nigger. So when somebody calls you that, understand that they're stupid and pray for them and keep on doing what you're doing."
At the age that she told me that, I accepted that to be the truth. So when people brought me that stuff, I said, well, they're stupid, Lord, help them, and kept on trucking.
Tavis: (Laughter) That's a very good prayer, isn't it? Lord, they're stupid. Help them (laughter). I'm gonna start praying that prayer today. All right. I could talk to you for hours. But before my time runs out, I'd better get to talking about this concert series. We were talking earlier at the top of our conversation about all the goodness and the love and the doors you've opened for others to showcase their talent and you're still doing this after all these years.
Reese: Well, these people, Jon B and S.W.V., are people who were very successful, but they don't happen to have a hit record at this moment. So you can't find them, you can't hear their music and they're not offered opportunities like they did when they had hit records.
Noel is that way. She's a powerful voice, a wonderful person, but she got married and she had two sons and she decided that it was best for her sons if she stayed home with them. It's her opportunity now to give vent to this music that she's got inside of her, so I'm presenting her too. It's gonna be a wonderful, wonderful evening.
Tavis: The passion to do this comes from where?
Reese: Well, Ed Sullivan, for example. He put me on his show and God is so good to me. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it's the real truth. I recorded a song called And That Reminds Me. It was an adaptation of the Autumn Concerto. The Autumn Concerto was the love song of Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, so every time he wanted to make love to her, he had me on his show to sing the Autumn Concerto. This is a gift from God. You don't get this.
Tavis: (Laughter) That's the kind of God you serve.
Reese: That's right.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
Reese: So I did his show 18 times in one year.
Tavis: He made love to his wife 18 times in one year?
Reese: That's right, via television. Because at that time - that's why Carol Burnett was pulling on her ear. At that time, you couldn't call anybody's name for attention and this was his way of giving her love on a Sunday afternoon.
Well, he took me to Las Vegas and, at that time, I could work there, but I couldn't sit down there, I couldn't eat there, I couldn't sleep there. I lived in a place called the Dust Bowl and it was named correctly because there wasn't a cement sidewalk in the place. Sammy lived there. Lena Horne lived there. Billy Eckstine lived there. That was the only place we could be.
I'm coming from the Dust Bowl this particular day and I'm late and I want to get there because I open the show. I get there and I open the show, but I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat. I'm from Detroit. I pick up the phone, I call room service, I order a hamburger. Now that's ten minutes after eight, but now it's a quarter to twelve and the second show is going on.
I'm in a dressing room with a lady named Blossom Dearie and Blossom is having a fit. She's walking up and down the halls. "How do you expect this child to work? They won't give her something to eat. This is the stupidest um-hum that I've ever been through." Ed Sullivan heard her and said, "Blossom, what's wrong with you?"
She said, "The girl ordered a hamburger right after she came off and they haven't given her anything to eat and I don't know how you expect her to go on hungry." He said, "I don't." So he picked up the phone and I'm standing right by the phone and he calls room service and he said, "This is Ed Sullivan. Miss Reese would like to have a hamburger. How would you like the hamburger, Miss Reese?"
Now they got to be able to hear this on the phone, you understand me? I'm so hungry, I say any way. He said, "Oh, no. How would you like it? Would you like lettuce and tomato?" I said, "Lettuce, tomato, mustard" and whatever else I said. He said, "Miss Reese would like a hamburger with lettuce and. . ." The hamburger got there almost before he hung up the phone, you see.
So I'm so glad to have it and I'm gonna eat it because it's time for me to go on. He said, "No, don't eat like that." He said, "If they had brought the hamburger when you asked them to bring it, you'd have been through by now, so take your time." So he held up the show for 20 minutes so I could eat the hamburger.
Every night after that, he and Mrs. Sullivan took me to every restaurant on the Strip, sat me down in the middle of the restaurant. People got up and walked out. They didn't want to be eating in there with me. He treated me royally.
Well, I owe somebody else that kind of treatment and that's what this is about. Every year, I want to be able to do this, bring some people who are talented and need to be singing and give somebody a chance who has never had a chance.
Tavis: And so it is.
Reese: And amen.
Tavis: (Laughter) June 20. If you're anywhere near Los Angeles, come and hang out with Della Reese and Jon B and S.W.V. and introducing this new artist, Noel. I love you.
Reese: I love you more.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Reese: And you too.
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