Access Atlanta > American Idol Buzz > Archives > 2008 > October > 05
Sunday, October 5, 2008
10/6: Ruben Studdard in Atlanta for sickle cell awareness campaign
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I missed Ruben Studdard’s performance at the Greater Piney Grove Baptist Church Saturday night because I was uploading video of Diana DeGarmo. Else, I would have done video of Ruben, too. He was in town to spread awareness of sickle cell disease, which affects African Americans disproportionately. More details here.. I did catch him briefly signing autographs and spoke to him for a few minutes afterwards.
He’s prepping for his “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” national tour gig as Fats Waller and is still working on his fourth album. He’ll be in Atlanta again at Fox Theatre next month. (As you may recall, he recently married an Atlanta gal he met at a Wal-Mart CD signing a couple years back.) Here’s the original Fats Waller:
Ruben had no particular comment about Clay Aiken coming out a couple weeks back.
“I don’t have any thoughts,” he said. “That’s Clay’s sexual preference. And that’s pretty much all I have to say.” He said he talks to Clay regularly but not about stuff like that. He also hopes to catch Clay in “Spamalot” when he’s up in New York prepping for “Ain’t Misbehavin’ “.
He said he hasn’t done stage work since college doing “Porgy & Bess” but his parts were always small. In this case, he’ll be on stage virtually the entire time. His colleague Frenchie Davis has told him to rest up a lot and drink plenty of liquids to handle the eight days a week grind.
Here are a couple of other photos I took:
-Speaking of Clay, he wrote extensively about why he came out and his mixed feelings about the public (or in his mind, the media) obsessing over it. Here is what he wrote. And here’s an excerpt:
[F]or the last five years, I’ve found what seems to have been an inordinate amount of interest (not from the public, but from the media) in my own personal life. The questions never seemed to stop. Oh sure, they die down for a period, but they resurface. The wind blows another direction, and I do yet another interview worried that my personal life will become a topic of discussion. No doubt the birth of Parker would bring the same scrutiny, just heightened. It’s an interesting time we live in. Gone are the days when entertainers could go about their lives without the invasion of privacy that we now see everyday in the form of paparazzi and internet tabloid bloggers. So, in the hopes of being able to sing and act (and dance poorly) and do what I love to do for a living while raising my son in a hopefully more private and accepting environment, I chose to go ahead and confront things head on.
Yes, I would have preferred to separate my personal life from my professional life. I would have been just as happy to go on without discussing my orientation. But, it seems like that was not an option. Make no mistake, its not because I am ashamed. No, not for a minute. I haven’t always been as comfortable as I am now, but I am without a doubt, proud of who I am and make no apologies for it. Instead, I would have been happy to have kept my personal life private for that very reason. Because it’s personal life and I have always considered myself a private person. But, living as myself without discussing my sexuality publicly would have been as impossible.
For some of you it won’t be enough, but I can’t apologize for keeping my personal business to myself. If someone feels that they were mislead, I can totally understand that viewpoint and apologize for that feeling, but I can’t apologize for how I handled questions that affected me and my right to privacy.
In a fairly verbose way, he covered the topic thoroughly. Honestly, what’s there more to say about it? If he had done so four years ago, the elephant would have left the room a looong time ago. But that was his choice and now we can all (hopefully) just move on, right?
-And here’s a Blake Lewis interview. Is he bitter? Nahh…
Why didn’t Arista get behind the record?
They were at first. But a lot of the people who were got fired because of the industry’s troubles. The people that stepped in didn’t call me or e-mail me for like two months. So I waited and waited and waited, while I could have stepped up and toured. (Laughs) It’s kinda nice to have a label’s support when you’re on a label.
