Charlie Wilson

With the Gap Band coming from Oklahoma, other artists would tease us by calling us cowboys. We didn't grow up on a ranch, but we took that style to the stage. We knew that it was corny, but at least it was ours.

My father's nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that's how I decided I wanted to get into music.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.