KALAMAZOO, Mich. It all started with the keys. Music is my life. It still is and it was when I was a kid, says
Bertha Barbee-McNeal, co-founder of legendary Motown group The Velvelettes. At 9 years old, she remembers, I would sit on my curb (in Flint, Michigan), and I would listen to this gal play the piano. My parents let me take lessons, and I would walk four of five blocks every day … I don t think I missed a lesson until I was 22.
That passion for piano is what led Barbee-McNeal to Kalamazoo in the early 1960s. She was already an accomplished classical pianist when an organist from her father s church recommended she pursue a music degree at his alma mater Western Michigan University.