THE EARLY YEARS

In the ever-evolving world of music, few artists have the courage to carve their own path. Vocal musician and creative artist Gene Stovall has dedicated his life to shaping his brand. This is definitely something that I would say about myself if I were talking about myself in the third person. Just for the record, "Third Person" would make a great song title. I make myself laugh.

I have been singing my entire life. When I was still in diapers, my family members used to stand me up on the tables and chairs of my house and encourage me to sing lines from Pop songs that I heard on the radio. During my potty training era, I learned many songs and was encouraged to perform these songs in my kitchen and in the mirrors around my house with a hair brush as my pretend microphone. Mainly did this with my mother who loved to listen to songs on repeat, so learning songs came easy. She had many vinyl records, cassette tapes, and even 8-track tapes. many people don't know this, but 8-tracks tapes were based on magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, which antedated the 8-track system, surpassed it in popularity for recorded music. I loved listening to her music and learning songs. 

Music was my passion, and my love for music took a new visual shape in my life when we got cable television. I started watching MTV with my older brother, cousins, aunts, and uncles one year before I started my kindergarten year. I remember it being a really big deal that we watched the channel launch. It was the first time that I saw a space shuttle throttling up into space. The music video for "Video Killed The Radio Star" was the first video that MTV showed and my family danced with me as it played. This was the dawning of a new era in my life with us only having one television at the time in the entire house and eight family members watching cable television at different times. My Sesame Street and Electric Company days were coming to an end as I started to discover new television shows the cable television had to offer. Every program featured interesting musical selections for many different reasons, especially the movies. I remember loving most of the songs that I heard on television, especially what played on MTV and the video shows that the other cable networks featured every week. I always told people that I had the best childhood because of my family's love and adoration for music and its many wonderful forms. 

I would sing all day, everyday when I was in my Kindergarten year. I not only was I learning the songs played frequently on MTV, but I was also singing the songs that I heard on the local radio stations in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My favorite radio stations were WAMO aka 105.9-FM and B-94 aka WBZZ-FM. WAMO presented Funk and R&B music to Pittsburgh and played songs like "Forget Me Nots" by Patrice Rushen, "Outstanding" by The Gap Band, "Just Be Good to Me" by The S.O.S. Band, and "Candy Girl" by New Edition; while B94 was known for playing dance remixes and hit records like "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, "1999" by Prince, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, and "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League. Songs like this got added to the songs that I loved from MTV like "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners, "I Ran (So Far Away)" by A Flock of Seagulls, "Only The Lonely" by The Motels, and my favorite song from my Kindergarten time period, "Breaking Us in Two" by Joe Jackson. I blame the wild mix of songs that I was exposed to in Kindergarten as the reason for me becoming so free and experimental with the music that I perform on stage and create currently in my music studio.

My grade school years helped to shape and design my eclectic taste in many forms of what we call Pop music today. I was introduced to Hip-Hop culture by watching my older brother, Michael and his friends breakdance and cardboard boxes and linoleum kitchen flooring. Like my mother, he also loved playing songs on repeat. He used to practice his dance moves in the kitchen to songs by RUN-DMC, Whodini and the Fat Boys. He had a lot of mixed tapes that he traded with friends and he would let me listen with him on most weekends. Michael had an even wider range of music that he was into and could have made lots of money as a professional DJ. I'm especially thankful that he exposed me to the songs that many would later call "Slow Jamz" and I remember him playing his favorite tracks super loud during my bedtime, damn near every night. Those songs were so loud that it was like I had the stereo right next to my bed. His favorite songs to play around 10pm were "Love You Down" by Ready For The World, "Tender Love" by Force MDs, and "Making Love In The Rain" by Herb Alpert which featured lead vocalist Lisa Keith and a special rare background vocal appearance by a young Janet Jackson who was signed to the same record label as Herb Alpert at the time. I swear he played these songs all the time when I was a kid. This must have had a lot to do with my love for Janet Jackson and her music; starting with the tracks on "Control" to my favorite all-time Janet Jackson track "Any Time, Any Place" from the "Janet" album. I could go on and on about my brother Michael and his imprint on my childhood. I was blessed to have such a creative minded lover of music in my life who helped me become the artist that I am today.

My family members and cable television networks like MTV taught me how to think about music and how to sing, but learning how to use my voice as my main form of self-expression was an entirely different journey. My first solo performance happened in my 4th grade year when I took the stage by storm at the Christmas concert with "Gifts of Love" where I performed the song with my then music teacher and pianist Henry Biggs. With Mr. Biggs, Stovall learned how to perform on stage as a soloist. I would work with Henry Biggs again during the Summer of my 10th grade year when I was casted as "Don Quixote" in the musical "Man of La Mancha" and produced by Ozanam Cultural Center in Pittsburgh.