|
Before I tell you about the interview, let me tell you about Dean Scott. He has performed for all ages and all types of people, from Joe fan off the
street to Elvis Presley himself! He has entertained more celebrities than most performers. He has appeared on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show,
the ABC Wide World of Entertainment and more. He has played to crowds of fans at the Las Vegas Hilton, The Flamingo Hilton, Caesars Palace, The Queen
Elizabeth, The Houston Astrodome, The Beverly Hilton, The Summit, The Legends of Golf, The Houston Open, The Sahara Open to name only a few. He is a
multi-talented entertainer with a flair for impersonation so exacting that it leaves audiences clamoring for more! This is the side of Dean Scott that
the fan knows and loves! Dean is one of only seventeen performers in the world to receive the Jimmy Durante Life Time Achievement Award for a lifetime
of entertaining fans. All the other receivers of this award are more widely known across the globe, such as Lucille Ball. The amazing thing is that this
is a bigger side to Dean Scott.
I learned another story. This story is one that I hope is taken to heart by everyone who reads it. If more people felt like Dean Scott, it would be an
easier, softer world in which we live. This is a story of a boy who grew up as a white kid in a segregated country. When Dean was a kid, blacks drank
at separate water fountains, stayed in separate hotels and did not have the civil rights to share a white man’s world. Dean used to sneak over to the
black church and peer through the window at the people singing and praising God. He fell in love with the music that was coming from the hearts of a
people who were not even considered by our government to be his equal. Eventually, the preacher invited Dean to come in and sing with the church choir.
He was only seven years old. He felt a soul and a rhythm coming from the church that he carries with him today. He was probably the only white kid
singing in a black church in America at that time. It took a seven year old to have the courage to take down a racial barrier and see the truth about
people. It took music, the language of the heart to guide him there. The irony is that the black church had no problem accepting this white kid. They
shared a common bond. Skin color had no part in it.
When I heard this story, I started to open up to Dean Scott, the man. He is a real person with a genuine heart. Without being judgmental of our world
today, he is a rare individual. Most of us, somewhere deep inside us have some parent, grandparent, relative or friend who has openly shared a racial
slur or exemplified a racial prejudice. I saw a man totally free of any learned racial bias. He is the kind of person who can walk into a country café
in Leander, Texas in a diamond earring and long hair and feel right at home. He is the kind of person that can perform in an all black club in the 60’s
and feel right at home. He just sees you for who you are. Dean loves music so much that when he sang at a black church against the grain of the time,
nothing stopped him from performing, not even his own race. He sang solo. He sang harmony. He became a performer tight there in that black church. Some
say that the only thing worse than being black in the early 60’s, was being a lover and supporter of blacks as a non-black. What I truly admire about
Dean is that he did not care about what people thought. He followed his heart. He was mentored by many of the most respected black blues artists and
musicians to grace our planet: BB King, Bobby “Blue” Bland and his contemporaries B.J. Thomas, Roy Head and ZZ Top.
Following his heart caused Dean many problems. He toured with BB King for several years as well as other prominent black performers. I found it
disturbing that BB King could not stay in a hotel with white people. I found it promising that a white man in a prejudice society would not fall to peer
pressure and end his participation in a tour when he was being threatened at gunpoint.
Dean saw his friends treated with disrespect and indecency on many occasions and as a white man under threat of his own life stood by his friends. He
grew up in a time when it took Rosa Parks to finally say that she had enough. The common ground for Dean was music. So, who is Dean Scott? Dean Scott is
a performer, not a color, not an ego he is what a righteous God intended a human being to be.
He is a man who has earned respect by people who have no color barrier. He has learned to perform so well because his heart is free of the prejudices
that cause problems even in today’s world. If we don’t know Dean Scott as a superstar like Elvis Presley, there is a reason. At the peak of his career,
he had a choice to make. He is a father who decided to give up the star status on television and Las Vegas to make certain his children would know him as
daddy. He made a choice to be a father and husband. He put performing as secondary. As a result, Dean has people in his life who are close to him. He
does not have to reflect on a career of success from a place called loneliness.
I learned a real lesson from this interview. If you put down your barriers and trust your heart, don’t live by what others may say or believe and treat
all people with the respect and dignity that you would like to receive, then your heart can be opened up to your dream. The dream is the journey.
Thanks Dean.
|
