performing arts crescendo is a production of international artists in new york city seattle washington thank you for  it has been such an honor to play with you here today i just wanted to take a moment at the end of the show here and give you an opportunity to talk one on one with our present audience and to tell and really it's great to be with another cancer survivor who you know has beaten the odds and that's what's been happening in my life most recently but i started out as a singer grew up in east l a and as a little girl i always wanted to be a singer but there were a lot of talent scouts coming to east l a and saying hey you fat kid with glasses you can be a big star so i had to find alternative ways to make music and of course like lots of kids i started out in church singing and directing the choir at my church at the children's choir and then as as i got older i still was using music a lot in my neighborhood i learned how to sing in spanish i lived in a mostly  soothe the savage beast because there was a lot of gang activity in my neighborhood and because i could sing a lot of oldies i was real popular with all the gangsters and made a lot of friends and was able to avoid being beaten up music really does bridge gaps  and build bridges and i ended up having a baby young i was sixteen and i had when i got pregnant seventeen when i had my son evan who played drums with us today and and so teenage mother had kind of put my musical aspirations on hold for a little while i to survive and find ways to make money and so there was a little difficult period in my life where i didn't work playing music but i ended up coming back to music and i grew up in hollywood during the sort of punk in our own way and it was a really wonderful time to be a part of the music scene and that's really what spawned my my dreams of being a professional musician i saw a lot of my friends dwight yoakam get signed to a big record deal maria  of my friends and i got my own record deal in one thousand nine hundred sixty with c b s epic it was a country deal and i really started singing country because the music i was hearing on the radio then was like linda ronstadt and carly simon and those were the singers that i emulated but  y country music kind of chewed me up and spit me out i was to controversy over country i've always kind of said i'm a black drag queen trapped in a white woman's body and that's because i i'm drawn to the fabulous and i'm drawn to feathers and sequins and many of my good friends are driving performers and many of them perform my compositions so i really feel an affinity with with flamboyant career charismatic  performers and so it led me to the blues and the blues was really a place where i found a lot of charismatic big women who are proud of their size proud of their sexuality proud of who they were i didn't have to how hide things like i was encouraged to do in country country i was really encouraged to just be a cookie cutter kind of person and lose some weight not be controversy or not be an activist and just play it safe in blues there was a lot more controversy a lot of women who wrote songs about prostitution and who'd been single mothers themselves memphis many for instance wrote a lot of songs about prostitution bessie smith was rumored to have spent time in bathhouses in between doing her songs downstairs is sometimes out of or on the hay upstairs so it was a place where i could really feel at home and the blues as you he set me free in my life of course in american musical history the blues blues and jazz is such an important part of of our musical history that it seems like the right place for me and i think it's really exciting to hear wurlitzer playing the flute it's really fun it's not something typical that you expect you know you do here having the three and the blues but the wurlitzer really is like a supporting life music watch for candy cane near you you're going to hear a concert like you've never heard before thank you so much to find out more information about can detain her band her tours her c d s and recordings at her television appearances and much much more please go to w w w dot candye kane dot com as you see spelled on your screen thank you for joining us on this episode of crescendo