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What song reminds you of a certain moment in your life?

Maybe it's your first love, your first heartbreak, or is it your biggest achievement?

We all have those songs, and every time we hear them, it brings us to that moment.

Our show is visiting a season six guest to find out how she's made a career recording songs that have shaped our moments.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

And then you from Los Angeles.

This is KLCS PBS.

Welcome to everybody with Angela Williamson and Innovation, Arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody, with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

Bonnie is back from season six to tell us a little bit more about her life as a musician.

Bunny, thank you so much for welcoming us into your home studio.

Well, I'm so glad to have you here.

Well, I got to talk to you last season about this wonderful organization.

But in talking to you, I realize you have really songs or written songs that have shaped so many moments of our lives, and I knew I needed to have you back.

So thank you so much for coming back.

Oh my pleasure, Angela.

We didn't get to talk about who you are.

So in this segment, let's just get let our audience know who is funny.

Well, my journey began, in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I was born, to my dad, pinky, and my mom, Jerry, who was a professional singer.

We moved to Las Vegas when I was three years old, and I went to Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic school, which everybody always finds very amusing.

But I grew up in Las Vegas, which is a concept for some people, but I grew up around entertainment.

My mother was a professional singer who stopped working when I was rather young, but she encouraged both my brother and I, who was a little younger than I am, into the arts.

I studied piano from the age of five and, dance from the age of seven, and worked my way up through, becoming a songwriter in my early teens.

I mean, I'm kind of condensing the story, but that's that's how it went.

And then my first professional jobs were in Las Vegas as a dancer.

My first job was working with Gene Kelly, his first and only show in Las Vegas, Gene Kelly's Wonderful World of Girls, and which was the thrill of my life and, very nerve wracking for me to dance with Gene Kelly, if you can imagine.

I waltzed with him and stepped on this man's feet every night, practically at least for the first week or so, until my nerves calmed.

And I'll never forget him saying the first time I did it right.

Good.

That's so good.

He was such a sweet man.

But, but I have.

There was a long history in, music and dance working lounges in Vegas as lead singer in a bunch of different shows, and then moving to Los Angeles, to become a songwriter and a singer.

And which started me on another phase of my journey as a musician, a singer songwriter.

Well, and you talk about those early days.

And first of all, I was shocked because normally people go to Las Vegas, but you are already in Las Vegas.

But another thing that I love about that story is you talk about your mom, even though it sounds like she retired to raise her children, but she still instilled a love of arts inside you and your brother.

I mean, how was that growing up in that household?

Oh, it was great.

I mean, my mom played the piano herself.

She encouraged my brother to become a drummer and and a dancer as well.

He was a tap dancer.

He worked with Donal O'Connor when he was a young boy.

But she, you know, she was always singing.

She.

I think she lived vicariously through us.

You know, back then and in that era, you didn't work.

You didn't have a profession as a woman and raise a family at the same time.

So that's why she, you know, her career came to a halt.

But but she, I think, really loved the arts so much.

She wanted us to experience what she knew and loved.

And that's.

And what a great gift to both of us, because we both worked in the music industry.

And I did up until founding Drama World.

But always, that was my life.

And you never thought of doing anything else?

I did not.

In fact, I'm one of the few people I know who never worked.

What they call a regular job.

I never worked as a waitress or, although my grandmother was a waitress and very proudly so.

But I, I, you know, I just was very fortunate, you know, I got to meet right?

People be in the right place at the right time.

And, I was able to make a good living in the in the music industry.

Well, and my question to you is, how do you decide to leave Las Vegas?

Because it's always been like, the second entertainment capital of the world.

I mean, there's so many great things to do there.

So how do you decide to leave Las Vegas and come to Los Angeles to pursue your dream?

Well, I think part of the motivation was my mother's passing.

And, because of that, it it made me it shifted things.

It shifted my my reality a little bit.

And also, I wanted to pursue a career as a songwriter.

And that was one thing that I couldn't really do in Las Vegas there.

was one recording studio there which I remember, which was by the railroad tracks, which was kind of a joke.

Which is where I first recorded anything, but I did.

I moved to Las Vegas because I wanted to.

I wanted to become a songwriter.

I had started writing and my and my 15, 16 years old and, writing was therapy for me.

Writing helped me shift the way I thought about things, and it was.

And I think that's that's why I as I grew and to dream a world, not to skip ahead to that, but I think it made me realize that this is something that changes you and can change you and can change your perception of life.

And I wanted children to experience that as well.

Well, I think it's really interesting about your songwriting when you write these songs, but how do you get people to actually listen to the songs that you've written and, and take them seriously enough to say, okay, we're going to take this song and put it with this fantastic artist?

Well, that was the that was always the tricky part.

I mean, I when I was younger and the business was a little bit different, you could actually make an appointment.

You could call someone up and say, I'd like to come play my songs for you.

But just pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone and call someone.

I don't think you could do that today, because I think the business has changed quite a bit.

But back then, I mean, I recall one instance where, fellow named Mike Stewart, who worked, I think it was with United Artists of the time, called me one day.

I had called him and I had gone to play my songs for them.

I had a little black briefcase that I carried around with my cassette tapes and my lyrics, and I would go and play my songs for anyone who would listen.

And I had met him, and then he called me one day and said, Bunny, can you come down to my office?

He was up on Sunset Boulevard.

And I said, sure.

He said, I want you to meet somebody.

And he introduced me to someone named Narada Michael Walden, who, I wrote my first top ten hit with as a result of that meeting.

Was a song called Let Me Be Your Angel, recorded by Stacy Latta.

Saw and Narada went on to produce Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin and but this was this was a very early meeting and a very early part of my career.

That was it was just synchronization.

You know, when two people meet at the right time.

It's therapy.

So it's your emotions.

It's the words.

It's coming from within you and your heart and soul.

I mean, how do you let someone else sing that?

Do you feel like you're losing something when someone else sing that song, or do you feel like you're gaining more?

It depends who sings it.

Oh, okay.

See, now we're getting to the good stuff.

Yeah, because, I mean, there have been songs that I've had recorded where I was like, oh, you know, and then there have songs that I had recorded and I went, oh my gosh, I could I have never imagined it jump to that level.

I mean, you know, when Patti LaBelle sings your song, you know, it's taken to a different height, right?

And to a whole different, echelon.

She, she's because she's such an amazing singer.

Amazing singer.

But then also too, she takes those words and it's almost as if they came out of her because she has that range, but that passion behind that.

Yeah.

So when you find out that this legend like Patti LaBelle, once your song.

Oh yeah.

Do you do a happy dance?

What do you do, buddy?

Oh, you do a happy dance.

Okay.

You'd way do a happy dance.

Yeah.

It's so interesting because new attitude, for example, which was a song that I wrote for we wrote for Thelma Houston, who, who is another incredible singer, right.

And, at the time, Richard Perry was producing Thelma Houston, and he said, well, we kind of have all of Thelma songs, you know?

So, next we pitched it to the Pointer Sisters.

The Pointer Sisters passed on new attitude, and then it was taken to, for the for the movie Beverly Hills Cop.

And they, they decided to have Patty record it.

And that's what won a Grammy.

For us.

So, you know, you never know how things are going to shift to make something happen.

And what you look at as maybe missing the mark is not missing the mark at all.

It goes where it needs to, and it becomes something that you didn't even imagine.

And that is such a great story, because what you're showing me is that as part of the journey, that sometimes you have to hear, know a few times to get the right.

Yes.

Yeah, indeed.

Wow.

And that inspiration for that song, did you just write it for a moment?

Was there something going on in your life or just think, oh, I want a new attitude.

Let me just pen this.

You know, there were some things going on in my life.

Talk about music therapy.

I mean, I was I would say there were some rough things going on.

Some changes with, you know, my mother's passing and then other, just other things that were going on.

My life didn't feel settled and I needed a new attitude.

And I came up with a hook for that song.

And we had there two other writers on that song, John Guillotine and Sharon Robertson, both, great artists and writers in their own right.

And, I called Sharon up and I said, Sharon, I've got a hook for this song.

I'm feeling good from my head in my shoes.

Know where I'm going and I know what to do.

I tidied up my point of view.

I got a new attitude and she said.

I think we got something there.

So you know it all.

We put it all together, all the pieces, writing a song is like putting a puzzle together.

Always.

And sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard.

That song was very easy.

It was.

It just flowed.

It was.

It was there.

So you knew it had to be a hit somewhere.

I felt it.

But many times you feel songs are hits and and they don't end up becoming a hit.

You know, they end up sometimes they don't end up being recorded at all.

I mean, I've got hundreds of songs that have never been recorded, so they they find their home, you know, you look for a home for them and they find it when the time is right.

I love that was a perfect way to end this segment.

We come back, we going to about your songwriting, about you singing backup, and also to about Dream World as well.

Because we didn't we weren't able to get into depth about it with our first conversation.

We'll talk more about that.

All right.

And come back to hear more from Bunny.

So what do I do with.

Just look at some.

Welcome back.

We're here with Bunny to hear stories about some of the favorite songs she's written or recorded.

But we talked a little bit about some of the favorite songs that you wrote in the first segment.

So that's one of the songs that you recorded as a backup singer?

Well, you know, that goes back the beginnings of that.

Go back to when I was playing piano bar here in LA, which is something that I know, right?

I'm my mother at that.

Sometimes I wonder, what I did, I when I first got here and I was working my way up as a songwriter and a singer, I was doing piano bar, and I worked up on Sunset Boulevard at, the sunset, the riot house.

They used to call it the Continental riot house, and I, I did piano bar, but it was a different kind of piano bar because people actually came there to hear me play.

And I met a lot of wonderful people there, little a lot of entertainment people who stayed there.

And I started getting hired as a background singer, and I started getting my songs picked up.

That was the beginning, one of the first songs that was picked up.

And I got to do a duet, on Harvey Mason's album was was called funk in the Mason jar, and, you know, that makes me think about, you know, the that sort of trajectory of my life and the kinds of songs that I wrote because I seemed to always lean towards something that was empowering, something that made me feel better, that I hoped would make other people feel better.

So, some of the albums that I recorded on through the years were, Anita Baker.

I worked on Sweet Love.

I worked with DeBarge.

I worked with, Michael Jackson.

I was a pretty, I worked on a lot of R&B records and it was always a great honor to me to be the only white singer with an all girl group.

And I think there's a funniest story I had was when I showed up at a session one day and the producer said, who were you?

And I said, Bunny Hall.

And he said, no, you're not.

He expected me to be black.

And because that was the those were all the records that I worked on.

So, and this was, this was my soul.

These were the these were the, the singers that I listened to growing up.

I listened to Aretha Franklin.

I listened to Sarah Vaughan.

I listened to a great variety, but R&B is where my heart was.

And and it fed me so that I always, it just came out through me.

I couldn't help it.

What you talked about, even with how you've written music.

But it's always two inspire and empower.

And I was thinking that too.

In fact, you talked about it before.

I can even ask you a question about your music.

It's always empowering, but you think too.

That probably fuels how you were singing, and which is why you always sung backup in R&B.

I think it did.

I think it did fuel me and it helped me keep myself on the road and, you know, thinking positive, you know, reinforcing the things that I wanted to happen instead of the things that I didn't want to happen.

You know, the things that I was envisioning for my life and the way that I, I wanted my life to unfold.

And I and, you know, I've always sort of set, I've never made like, I never made a conscious decision to move, to dream a world.

It was just something that I felt in something that happened, that positivity that I was, was coming through in my songs that I wrote for adult artists started to come through in the songs that I wrote for children.

I started writing children's books.

I wrote a book series called The Young Master's Little Wisdom series, which was chock full of music and positive songs for children, and that led me to write curriculum, and that led me to found Dream a World and be able to bring to children what I felt for myself as I was moving through my life.

Well, and when you do that, what you're doing is you're giving that empowerment to the next generation, right?

Yes.

I mean, it's sounds hokey and but the children are our future, you know, they they are the ones that are going to take this world over and how and how and what do we want them to feel like and think like, what do we want their foundation to be?

I feel like we need to teach them what we call the secrets of the heart.

And those secrets are start with friendship.

Because friendship has always been so important to me.

It's the relationships you make in your life that help determine your future.

And so this is what children should begin to learn, I think, and at a very young age, friendship, kindness, imagination, gratitude and so on.

That's the that's the beginning of the foundation of the secrets of the heart program.

But it also sounds like it's Bunny's foundation as well.

It areas it is indeed.

I mean, we're talking about the children and we'll come back to the children, but I'm also thinking about a song that you wrote for and Aaron Spelling or their opening of there.

Was it Any day.

Any day now?

It was actually the end, the closing episode, the final episode of Any Day Now with Lorraine Toussaint.

And, it was a song called Just By Being Here, and that was and the lyric was, was a very meaningful lyric to me as I lie in the arms of the infinite, I trust myself to lead me on.

So it's all about how you feel about how life is going that matters.

And what was a difference that you're going to make just by being here.

And you do.

We all make a difference just by our mere presence.

And, and if we can harness that energy, that positive energy that we that I believe we all have inside of us and guide it along, that's how we make a difference, each one of us in the world.

And you've taken even tenets from that song and put it in To Dream a World.

I.

Yes.

And how important is that?

Not only because you are in this area, but you are expanding not only just in the US, but outside of the country, because there's children outside of our country that needs to hear this message as well.

Yes.

Well, we began, by bringing the program to Zambia.

We're in two schools in Zambia, and there was a school there that wanted to focus on social emotional education for their students, and they weren't quite sure how to do that.

And we came in contact with them and and they embraced the program, which is a web based program.

It's we do on campus programs, and we do web based programs in secrets of the heart.

So we with the web based program were able to go anywhere.

So they have been running that now for three years.

And we also ran it in a school in South Africa.

And now because of your connection, we're going to be running the program in Nigeria.

And so you're taking lyrics and you're taking songs that you spent your entire career writing to empower adults, and now you want to do that with children, not only just children in the United States, but around the world.

Exactly.

So my question for you is, out of everything that you've done, what would you say would be the song you think of when it comes to it brings you back to that moment.

What inspires you?

I think change inspires me.

And being able to make change.

And I think actually, this there are several songs that do that.

Well, just by being here is one of those, even though That's Not a hit was never a hit song for me.

That song meant something very special to me.

The other song is ready for a miracle.

Because when you're ready for a miracle you know anything can happen.

It's your your receptivity, right?

That's another song that was recorded by Patti LaBelle.

And, that is one of the songs.

That's that's it.

That was a game changer for me.

I want us to talk about Angel of the night.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Oh I love I love that song.

That song was about a Guardian angel.

And it actually was, interestingly enough, about someone that I knew who who had spirit guides.

He always told me he had spirit guides that led him through life.

And I wrote the song Angel of the night, which was recorded by Angela Bow Feel and was pretty much my first cult hit, I would say, which was, unfortunate thing back then.

And led the road to another song, that we didn't talk about is a song called freedom that was recorded by Michael English and then was also recorded by Wynona Judd for the Prince of Egypt film.

Well, in Michael English, she was contemporary Christian.

Yes, yes he was.

And then it transitioned over to a song for a movie.

It did.

Oh, wow.

Well, and then that brings us to, another award winning song that you wrote with Patti LaBelle and.

Edwin Hawkins, Edwin Hawkins.

Yes, that's ready for a miracle.

That song won a Dove Award.

It was in the film leap of Faith, and it was also in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty.

And that was a song that was another one of those positive, wonderful anthems, sort of.

I wrote with Art Reynolds, who was a gospel writer who wrote Jesus Is Just All Right With Me.

And, that that was a groundbreaker for me.

And gospel music was the first gospel song I had ever written.

That shocks me, because you've been writing all of these songs about empowerment and love and everything, and then all of a sudden this song takes off.

But it's because it's such a great song and you have these wonderful artists who want to sing this song.

That must be the passion that you put into Dream World, right?

It is.

I mean, to talk about artists.

It is all of my fellow artists that I brought along with me into Dream a World when it started.

We started at our first school, the Elementary, which was in 2008.

And we we did it with the program for five classes there, 125 students.

And at this point we've served 60,000 students and families through dream of world, on campus programs.

And we've we have, 30 different artists that we've brought in to do on campus, as well as the web based program, which is secrets of the heart TV, which is the program that we've talked about being able to bring overseas to, to Zambia, to South Africa, and to now Nigeria.

Yay!

And everything is done here in the studio.

We do we do it here.

So you're bringing in these artists and the students, they're getting a taste of all types of music genres.

Am I understanding this correctly?

They are music.

They're getting music, dance, theater arts, visual arts.

Through the seedlings program, they're learning about arts of the Earth, like pottery, basket weaving, textiles.

So what what the program secrets of the heart teaches is, number one, it teaches a secret of a heart, like friendship or compassion or kindness.

Number two, it teaches the children an art form, like pottery making or singing or song or music of some kind.

Rhythm or theater and number three, it takes children to some place in the world that they've never been.

So we're which is really one of the most important parts of it to me because I think, there's so much division in our world that, bringing children, making them feel as if the world is a little closer to them, that they have something in common with the people around them that may speak different languages or look different.

Maybe it's important for them to learn that at an early age, at their most impressionable age.

And that's what secrets of the heart does.

I can't believe how quick our time went today.

Is it gone?

Yes.

Oh, it's long, it's gone.

But I cannot close our talk without asking you.

What do you want your greatest legacy to be?

I think dream a world is my greatest legacy.

As many songs as I've written and as much as music has always filled my life, being able to pass that on to a next generation is the legacy that I want to leave.

And it's a phenomenal legacy.

And thank you so much for everything you've done to empower people through your words and even being on the most, the most empowering albums out there.

But most of all, that you're leaving this legacy for the next generation and reaching out all over the world, including Africa.

So thank you so much.

Thank you for helping me spread the good word.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

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Good night and stay well.

Und um die.

Fünf.

Hi, I'm Angela Williamson, host of everybody with Angela Williamson.

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