I started playing ball when I was a kid. My dad was a pro ball player and he passed on his knowledge to me.
I started out playing football in the park with my dad. My dad was a bit of a ball player, but he couldn't really be bothered playing.
I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.
I was a momma's boy. I didn't get anything from Dad, except my body and baseball knowledge. The only time I spent with him was at the ballpark.
The physical DNA has always been part of our family. My dad was a good boxer and gymnast; my mum is a ballroom dancer, and my brother does martial arts.
My dad would take me deer hunting with him, which was pretty traumatic - 'Bambi' was one of my favorite movies.
And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.
All my band members were old enough to be my dad. It was like this family vibe.
My mom was sort of involved in amateur dramatics like Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and played the violin. My dad played banjo and piano and sang as well, so there was all this music in my childhood.
My dad was a banker, and I've always had an interest in it.
It was Labor Day weekend in 1983, and Dad hired me to run Mick's Lounge, a bar he co-owned, for $200 a week. The business was nearly bankrupt. But I said, 'Dad, I can fix it.' It was the most natural thing I'd ever done. It just made sense to me.
I remember one parent-teacher conference at the lower school, and Barack went, and there were SWAT guys on top of the roof of the school. And Malia was like, 'Dad, really? Really? Do they really have to be up there?' And it's like, yeah, honey, they do.
My dad's from Barbados, but I lived with my mum. She brought me up; my uncle took me to the football. I grew up in a white family, I'd say.
I grew up in Birmingham, but my parents are originally from Barbados. My dad, Romeo, was a long-distance lorry driver, and my mother, Mayleen, worked in catering.
My dad, as a guy, had to quit school in the ninth grade, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And spent his life pushing wheel barrels of heavy wet cement. So we've gone from pushing cement to now in one generation pushing legislation. But we always want any president to succeed, to do well; that means America does well and Americans do well.
Instead of the Beatles and the Stones, my mum and dad were listening to Michael Jackson, Barry White.
My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.
My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.
Some basic things I have picked up from Dad is how to interpret my character correctly, use the camera to my advantage and how not to hurry up with work.
I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.