One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life.

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia.