Q: [Gary] Marker was saying that it wasn't easy to get bookings if you were a racially integrated group [in the United States during the 1960s].

A: I didn't give a damn. My mother was so white, she might as well have been white. She was very, very light. My father was a brownskin man. Every time I look at my mother, I'm looking at a white lady.

I'll tell you something I've never, ever told anyone, I don't think. My mother used to take me to the supermarket and people would look at her and look at me and they couldn't figure the situation out. Was she with a black man? Is that her child?

So I would do things like snatch her purse and run, and store security would come and chase me down and tell her, "We've got him, ma'am!" and she'd say, "Got who? That's my son!"

I'd do that shit all the time, man!