Comments:
I am the proud Father of 4 beautiful girls from a marriage to Marillyn Paggett Bossard who I met in college at Louisiana Tech U. I started my college career at Kansas University where I led the freshman basketball team in scoring which put me on the radar screen. I was targeted by other schools and they contacted the NCAA concerning irregularities in my transcripts which were negotiated by KU. The NCAA said I could play Basketball at KU but KU offered me an Academic Scholarship. Basketball was my passion so I transfered to Loyola U in Chicago on a Basketball scholarship but that was rescinded for a year when my problems at KU became national news. Because of my disappointment with Loyola U I transferred to Louisiana Tech on a full scholarship I played in their program for 2 years At the end of my 3rd year of college I left school to marry my current wife who was with child, without playing out my last year of eligibility. Looking back had I stayed I would have been in a good position to play pro ball because my coach at Louisiana Tech became the coach of the New Orleans Jazz. It took me a while to get basketball out of my system, but in my late 30's my sister married Noble Jolley a jazz guitarist I traveled with him and he would always ask me to come up on stage and sing a song. Because of that I started studying voice with Sam Bonds a local voice teacher I auditioned for the Washington Opera a year later and I was contracted to do 4 Opera's that season. That same year Washington Opera held a audition for Spoleto Festival's production of Porgy and Bess an Opera written by the Gershwin's I was accepted and the production was performed in Melbourne and Sydney Australia for 2 months. After that I stayed with the Washington Opera for 5 years. Then I went to work for a Genetics Firm called the Institute for Genomic Research they allowed me time off to perform Porgy and Bess in Israel and Japan but because of conflicts with my growing position at TIGR
they turned down my request to sing in Paris and Hawaii because of that and because of my growing passion to sing and the fact the my youngest daughter was about to graduate from High School I left TIGR to sing full time. Because Porgy and Bess is an Opera that can only be performed by Black singers due to copyright restrictions put in place by the Gershwins I have been able to travel the world. "I have toured the US 5 times, England 3 times I have sung in Israel twice Cairo Egypt spent a month in China and Singapore,Japan, I have toured Europe 5 times sung in Norway before the Queen and King in Finland, Brazil, Argentina, Australia among other places. I am currently in The Canary Islands performing in Porgy and Bess and we travel from here to Sicily Italy I will be back in the States in late October 2009. When in the States I perform with a group called the Cornell Gunter Coaster's. Cornell was an original member of the Coasters (Yakety Yak, Poison Ivy, Charlie Brown) we do shows around the US with The Platters and the Marvelettes.
