Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: First of all, dream big and be bold. Don’t be afraid to try new things and don’t be afraid to fail. Everything is not going to be perfect, but when you get in that stride and you get in that rhythm, you can hear that beat and you can dance. 

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire.

So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Lady Dhyana Ziegler, is currently president and CEO of Z creators, LLC. And Professor Emerita of Florida A&M University. She’s worked in the field of higher education and technology for more than 35 years.

As a professor and administrator, Dr. Ziegler is the author of four books more than. 60 scholarly publications including book chapters and has produced more than 100 videos and other multimedia works. She most recently published Midnight Train from Georgia, which chronicles and celebrates the extraordinary life of William Franklin Guest, one of the founding members of the famed Singing Group, Gladys Knight and the Pips.

I’ve read Midnight Train from Georgia and can tell you it’s a fascinating study of an artist working inside the rough and tumble world of show business at the highest level. For those listeners who may not know Gladys Knight and the Pips released numerous popular smash hits songs like Midnight Train to Georgia, I’ve got to use my imagination.

Best thing that ever happened to me and many more. Lady Dhyana is also a multimedia writer, digital content producer and songwriter. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s my distinct privilege to welcome the outstanding educator and author Lady Dhyana Ziegler to StoryBeat today. Lady Dhyana, welcome to the show.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Thank you so much, Steve for inviting me. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s my great pleasure. Believe me. I’m so happy to have you here. So let’s go back in time just a little bit. How old were you when you first started thinking about being a scholar and an educator? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, you know, it’s so funny because my. Root was not to be an educator.

I really thought that I was going to help save the world through music. I was inspired by music. My father was the lead singer of the morning, doves Gospel Quartet. And my brother-in-law that you mentioned, William Franklin guess, was in my life since I was 11 years old. Mm-hmm. So while, um, my sister and I, basically as when I was a young child, we were, we were dancers in the neighborhood.

So we studied, you know, interpretive dance. Uh, I studied a little tap in ballet. I went to a little Catholic school resurrection. We put on performances every year. We, we had to dance and. Sing. So by the time we got involved with, um, Gladys Knight and the Pips, I was already introduced a little bit to entertainment.

Mm-hmm. So I really thought that I was going to be an entertainer. Did, did you sing also? Uh, I actually had two bands and my last one, um, time and space, but I also. Wrote and produced a number one disco song in 1975. Time moves on by the group strut. Okay. And I was a, yeah, I was a double major music. So yeah, I did a little bit of all of that.

I sang, I sang in the choir. In fact, I was just. Um, telling my, my, some of my grammar school classmates, I’m just coming back from New York celebrating my birthday that I’ve been telling people that the reason I probably sing so high is because of Catholicism, because they had me as a soprano. And if you think about the masses and everything, they’re usually in a very high key.

So that’s how, you know, I was gotten involved with, uh, music and a little singing. 

Steve Cuden: So how did all of that upbringing of being surrounded by music, musicians, um, performers and so on, how do you think that that then eventually impacted what you did as an educator? Because I want to get to both sides of your, uh, your disciplines.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: It, it is because of, um, music and entertainment. You know, it, it’s like what I tell my students when I stopped telling them that I was teaching them news or journalism, I told them, I was teaching them how to package information. So the transition, you know, to entertainment or in my particular field, which was journalism and broadcasting music and all of that.

And rhythm was just a part of that. So anything that I did, you know, on the radio or on television, always had some kind of musical rug. I never separated those entities. You know, I think about them all together in a package. You know, you just sort of change the bowl. 

Steve Cuden: That’s very interesting. So you’ve also been for quite some time also a storyteller and in the entertainment industry, what you’re doing as a song writer, a, a singer, and so on.

You’re also telling stories. So have you always thought of yourself as a storyteller? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yes. I mean, it, it was more, um, as a survival, uh, mechanism. I mean, in what 

Steve Cuden: way? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: People will not believe that. I really didn’t even talk much until I was 19 years old. I basically wrote everybody letters, you know, I mean, my, my sister and everybody was older than me.

Um, I was in Catholic school where you had to be silent. And you really learned how to write. And so all of that combined with, um, me being in my mind, I spent a lot of time in my mind, you know, trying to figure out things. In fact, they thought I was a little strange growing up. And because I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really just sleep.

I was one of those kids who rocked a little bit and I was always trying to figure out the universe and what was going on so that. Took me into actually poetry, but my mother will tell you, don’t go to sleep on this child because at seven years old, you would have a letter waiting for you by your coffee if she thought that she was mistreated or something.

So I would write letters and leave it by. I knew where my mother was gonna sit and drink coffee. Um, you know, if I thought that she raised a voice or she was, um, you know, asking me to do something that my older sister and brother didn’t have to do, I had to get it out. So I just wrote, and then that the writing evolved into poetry, and then I bought a guitar.

And started putting music to these poems or lyrics and in fact, to the point where I used to do this all day long and sometimes even fall asleep, you know, with the guitar just playing because it was soothing to me. So I guess it was almost like the rocking. 

Steve Cuden: So I’m fascinated by two things that you’ve talked about here.

One is the writing part of it, which you started obviously at a very young age. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yes. 

Steve Cuden: And you were learning this in school, I assume, and then on your own as well. Is that true? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yes. I mean, as and, and Catholic school writing was a big thing. Mm-hmm. Plus if you talked in school or anything, you had to write a hundred times.

I will not talk. So all of you know, sort of the discipline of Catholicism that we are all kind of, you know, rebellious about now, really helped crafted my art. I. I learned early that words were powerful. Uh, my mother did not really kinda scold me about that. In fact, she thought it was a little bit humorous.

Hmm, that I would do this because you know, my brother and. Sister, they were four, five, and six years older than me. So I could not with anybody, you know, so they were, everybody was always saying to be quiet. They didn’t really wanna be bothered with a little sister, you know, who was always having to run to even keep up with them ’cause they walked so fast.

So I found that as an outlet of expression early. I did not necessarily know. What I was doing or where it was going to lead me, but I knew that whatever it was, I had to get it out. 

Steve Cuden: Do you think being around all these songwriters and people who sung and listening to lots of music, and then also the Bible and being in Catholic school and so on, do you think that that’s where the lyricism came from in the poetry that you eventually turned to?

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, let me just say, by the time I got to Catholicism, that was my third baptism. 

Steve Cuden: Okay? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: When I was born, I was baptized Methodist. Then my parents sent me before I could go to school, to Florida. For a couple of years to live with my grandparents until I was old enough to go to school. But somehow down there and, and we still don’t know how I developed my brain, but I got skipped twice.

So when I was. Came back to New York. I was going to the fourth grade when I should have been going to the second. So I ended up in Catholic school on a fluke. ’cause my mother had one day off work. Public school would not take me. They said I was too small. I. And my mother had that one day off of work, so she had to get me in school.

So she took me over to Father Dugan because my sister and brother had decided they wanted to be Catholic. Now my grandparents, which I left out, they baptized me Baptist when I was down in Florida with them. Wow. And then when I came back, my. Sister and brother’s friends were Catholic. And then my mother turned Catholic, so she took me over to Father Dugan and he said, well, we’ll take her, but she’s too small to go in the fourth, so we’ll put her in the third.

I always contend I could have started wherever I. You know, but that’s how I ended up at least one grade ahead. But yes, all of the music, because the music I learned in the South, that gospel music was very, very heavy. But then I get back to New York and Catholicism, you’re almost complete silence, you know, because everything was so quiet.

But my father was still singing gospel. 

Steve Cuden: But the words, the words are lyrical all the way through what you’re talking about from all these different, whether it’s a Methodist or Baptist or Catholicism, all of it’s lyrical, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: right? Lyrical coupled with the fact that my mother. Especially, and my father, but my mother especially loved the Apollo Theater and Wednesday night.

So as a little kid I was going to the Apollo. We always sat in the right box seat. 

Steve Cuden: How old? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Um, I would say probably about nine. When I was 12, my sister and I won the twist contest. Really? At the Apollo. She won for the. Older I one four, the younger. Wow. And we’re like four years apart. So, and they, they played music in the house.

They played those 40 fives. We danced. They would probably call my parents, you know, that abusive, ’cause they, to, they come home and they wanted to play music. They would wake us up to dance and we would have fun dancing and playing music. So that was just a part of my life. 

Steve Cuden: It, it had to have been part of your life if you were sort of, you couldn’t help it.

It was all around you right. At all times. Uh, do you think that, uh, you were starting to conjure in your mind’s eye how to create stories and words and music and lyrics and so on, because you were surrounded by all that? That’s what I’m trying to get at is where does this influence come from in what you turned out eventually?

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: I think that a lot of. That had definitely had something to do with it, but also mm-hmm. I was sort of rebelled in the sixties the way everybody else did. Sure. Um, in my generation, and I was looking for something else. I was questioning Catholicism. My mother had to come to school because they said everybody who wasn’t Catholic would go to hell.

And I started screaming that my grandmother wasn’t going to hell, she’s Baptist. And so my mother basically told them, look. I’m not gonna have her believe that because she has members of a family that are other face. And then she told me, do not, you know, just be quiet about this. So I had to learn and, and the fact that I wasn’t, like I said, talking that much and writing letters.

I didn’t start the poetry and stuff until sort of the sixties, and that’s a, that’s a story in itself that I don’t even talk about much, but I actually ended up going to Jamaica about age 18, 19, and I was supposed to be there on a two week vacation. By that time I knew some people in the business, but I loved Jamaica so much and I ended up.

Deciding, I didn’t wanna come back right away, so I, I managed the guest house, but because I knew entertainers and I knew Johnny Nash and I knew his manager and stuff, I moved the, his, um, arranger and the wife in the house. I had a editor of a magazine and the house, so I. I built this house of entertainers that I knew to run this guest house, and throughout that I was also exposed a lot to Johnny Nash’s Music, Byron Lee and the Dragone Ears, and that’s where I bought my first guitar.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. In Jamaica. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: In Jamaica. 

Steve Cuden: Did you start to not only play the guitar, but did you start to write as at the same time music? Yeah, that’s 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: when I started writing and, and playing. In fact, it’s, it’s so funny because when I left I had a whole different persona. You know, I was a, a model, you know, my family were all dressers, but I, you know, I should do some modeling and.

Stuff. When I came back, I had jeans, a big old Afro and a guitar. They didn’t even recognize me coming through customs. So I mean, my mother just like kinda stared at me for three days because she did not know, and you know, and to me I thought this did not make any sense. I said, well, you know, here my sister, by this time my sister is dating William.

Like we’re, we’ve been exposed to, you know, entertainment. They, in fact, no, they had been married. ’cause I went there around just about that time. And so I just thought that this would be great that here her child is going to be in music and follow the same footsteps. Well, no, she did not want me in music or anything in her mind.

I had a brain, she paid for me to go to school. I need to use it. So I, I rebelled against that. I, I, I kept writing anyway. 

Steve Cuden: You were undaunted by that. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right, right. So I just, you know, continued. Of course after, after a while I had to move out of the house ’cause I was going, you know, my own way. But, but then by that time too, Gladys Knight and the Pips started really blowing up.

Mm-hmm. And I spent a few years because, you know. My brother-in-law, like ever since I was 11 years old, we were just close and I ended up being the executive Vice president of Patton and Guest Productions, which was Edward Patton and William Guess. And besides the music, I created a product, disco Bells.

In 1975 that we put out, that was in Cosmopolitan and Essence. And 

Steve Cuden: what are disco bells? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Disco bells that you wear on your wrist? It was jewelry, artistic jewelry. We, we produced a song put on your dancing bells. So I produced a couple of songs and, and wrote a couple of songs on the Willie Bridges. Album.

They produced Willy Bridges, who was a saxophone player, and at the same time I wrote my song Time moves on on Brunswick by the group Strut and co-produced the album. 

Steve Cuden: So how did you know how to produce had you been around production enough to know? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Oh, oh, yeah. You know, just, I’ve been in, I was in the studios with my brother-in-law and then I was blessed to also be around arrangers.

You know, I lived in 82nd street between Central Park, west and Columbus. Uh, Nick and Val Simpson, they lived on 79th Street. Benny Clark lived here. Um, Mickey Bass, who was a bass player who always thought I should play bass, lived a block away. So it was all these artists around Miles Davis lived on 80.

Fourth Street when I lived on 85th Street. So, you know, that was just a time of music. I studied at Jazzmobile. I went and learned percussion from Jazzmobile and Ted Dunbar, studied a little guitar. I, I went totally in the areas of the arts because that’s where I want it to be. And due to the fact of my brother-in-law being a PIP and being around all of these entertainers and them discovering I had talent because I was a lyricist, I would write an album overnight if I had stayed up all night and write, I mean even, even to this day, lyrics.

Or even, you know, people laugh, but writing thesis and dissertations were not hard. Everything has a, you know, methodology. I just learned the method, but what made me happy? 

Steve Cuden: Did you know early on as a young woman, did you know that you were good at it? Did you have that kind of confidence? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: I mean, yeah, because my song went number one, and also my brother-in-law, you know, they would listen not, and, and they would listen to the music and we would li we listened to a lot of music, a lot of music with.

Um, you know, young artists, new songwriters and stuff like that. And they would say, oh, that’s a hit, or This is a hit. 

Steve Cuden: Wow. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: And the people that I were, was around, they sort of embraced the fact, you know, that I could, I could write quickly and I had, you know, a feel I could. Played chords and stuff. I wasn’t the arranger.

Minnie Clark arranged the strut album. Time moves on, but I was a double major. So besides journalism, I majored in music, so I love strings. And time moves on if you ever listen to it. Oh, the strings in it are fantastic. That’s when music was really pure. And so being around these arrangers and going to these studios, I mean, we were recording music when the first 24 tracks studio came out.

You know, things were so different, but that was big, you know, in the seventies to have a 24 track studio. Now, you know, there’s so many tracks there. You know, it’s, it’s not 

Steve Cuden: as pure Well, you’re talking about back in the day when everything was recorded on tape, now it’s all digital, right? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yes. When it was recorded on tape, not digital.

I mean, the, the, the young folks don’t even hardly know anything. No. Even, no, of course not. Even when I, yeah. Even when I, you know, in the, in the book where they talk about, um, Garfield having a little hand. Carried record player. They don’t know anything about that. You know, they stream everything. Mm-hmm.

But there was a time you had to put things down and then it would drop down and then a needle would come over. 

Steve Cuden: So who were your musical influences that got you to write the kinds of material that you wrote? Who, who did you, did you wish to emulate or be? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, you know, I didn’t wish to be anybody, but you know when people is, and I just got a compliment ’cause I, I’m still writing some music and someone said to me.

Your music is like folk, it sounds like, like Bob Dylan, and I said, oh, thank you very much. That’s a good 

Steve Cuden: compliment. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: But I, yeah, it’s a real compliment, but I think that I learned folk guitar. I learned how to play folk guitar, so what? I could take that because I’ve taken the same kind of music and then handed it over to an arranger who would keep that melody, but make the music sound differently.

Steve Cuden: Hmm. So you’re writing something underneath. This is interesting. You’re writing something that is perhaps based on a folk thought or a folk sound, but you’re altering it to be a different, in a different sound entirely then. Yes. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right, and that’s because I’ve always sort of written messages. I mean, time moves on was like a fly robin fly.

Back in the day, you know, but just, but I think about you. It’s moving on. But I think about you, you know, which is a hook in there, which sort of tells a story and then the music does a lot. Um, but for Willie Bridges. Uh, when my true love comes along, I remember Willie, he’s a saxophone player. He’s deceased now, but he loves that.

You know, sort of like we’d be walking hand in hand through the park, hanging out like teenage lovers after dark. I mean, I used to go to Central Park with my guitar, get on top of a rock and just sing to people, you know, walking by because. That was, again, it goes back to that little girl. The music and all of that stuff was very, very soothing to me.

And the thing was that, you know, even now to this day, I will still, I. Write, or I even rock sometimes. 

Steve Cuden: Let’s talk for a moment about the book, about Midnight Train from Georgia. Tell the listeners what the book really focuses on. I mentioned a little bit, but give us a little more about what the book is about.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Okay. Well, first of all, midnight Train from Georgia. The reason is titled Midnight Train from Georgia, not only taking off on the song Midnight Train to Georgia, but the fact they left Georgia. The book tells a story of the beginning of the Pips, and people know them as Gladys Knight in the Pips, but they were originally the Pips.

Uh, my brother-in-law will say that he. He was singing and dancing in the womb because of his grandparents and parents singing on the back porch when he was in the belly, as well as a little young boy where all the neighborhood would come around and hear them singing. Mama Tilly, the grandmother singing.

Uncle playing the guitar and so on and so forth, and he learned harmony in the kitchen with his grandmother when she was cooking. 

Steve Cuden: Fantastic. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: She taught him harmony. Now, the original Pips were. Gladys Knight, her brother, Meryl Bubba Knight, her sister Brenda Knight, my brother-in-law, William Franklin guest and his sister, Eleanor guest, that was the Pips he contains.

Uh, William would contain that. That was the best singing group. So it tells the story from them as little kids growing up in a Baptist Mount Mariah Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in the youth choir, while their parents. Were in the adult choir and they were singing, but how they became sort of a pop group is because of Bubba’s 10th birthday party, and Little Garfield came over with his little record player and they were spending 40 fives, but Garfield had to go home early.

So they just decided that they would start singing and they started singing pop songs and the parents listened and said, wow, these kids sound great together. Mm-hmm. So that’s how they started. So then they started singing around Atlanta, and then they started, people started asking for them to sing and to show you the talent of them because all of them.

Had talent. Even in the third grade, when my brother-in-law went to school, a teacher just gave him a horn. He started playing it, gave El his sister clarinet. 

Steve Cuden: No training, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: no training. 

Steve Cuden: Wow. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: He would make, you know, and there’s stories in there, how they made up beats and, and classes and stuff like that. So as a result of them getting together as a group, as many of.

Um, the groups were ripped off. They had their experience with, um, someone kind of trying to rip them off early when they were teenagers, invited them over to just record some music. Next thing they know, they’re walking down the street and their song, every beat of my heart’s playing on the radio that the guy didn’t have permission.

So this is the story of how they became Gladys Knight, the pip. That song. However, though, got the attention of Bobby Robinson and New York who got in touch with a DJ to find these kids, found them, brought them up to New York and rerecorded that song. Hmm. And to distinguish between the two, they named one Gladys Knight in the Pips, ah, 

Steve Cuden: and 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: the other one, the Pips.

So that’s how the group became known. They decided to go, ’cause all of them were lead singers. 

Steve Cuden: The book really focuses mainly on William though, correct? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yes. Yes. 

Steve Cuden: And so why did you think this was the right time to publish a book about him? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: I. Well, you know, he, he passed in 2015 and he wanted his legacy. He wanted his story to be told and shared.

He wanted young people to learn about the business. He wanted them to not make some of the same mistakes that he made. You know, coming up even with all of, you know, all the temptations of the business that are out there, that comes with the entertainment business. That still comes with the entertainment business. 

Steve Cuden: A hundred percent true. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: You know, so he wanted to tell his story and I mean, he was a, you know, he was a good spiritual man. I mean, the fact that. Even though my sister and hi and, and him divorced, they were together till his death, till the last breath. And, and that’s how we be. We all became one family, the Ziglar, the knight, and the guest family.

So, you know, I grew up, I lived the story since I was 11 years old. I listened to all of the stories. I watched them grow. I watched them blossom and I videotaped him for years. 

Steve Cuden: Did you keep journals about all this too? Did you write this down? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: No, I, I, I did it on video. I had on video. Yeah. I videotaped an interview.

I mean, in the middle of the night when, you know nothing was going on, when we were just like talking, when the family was talking, when his grandmother was talking. All of that. So, you know, I’m a journalist, so I always had. A video camera with me, so mm-hmm. I captured moments for years and especially maybe the last seven years before his, his death, because that was the thing, because he would tell some, some stories over and over again.

So trying to, it was almost like a patch quilt. I had to put all of this stuff together and I had to actually transcribe them all. It was not. You know, a quick process. Transcribe them all. Get the parts that fit with this and fit with that. Put ’em all together. It was one of the serious editing jobs I’ve ever done in my life.

That took a long time to do. 

Steve Cuden: What was your process? Then? You have all this material. Where did you begin that process and how did you proceed to put it together? What? What was your process? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, I first started transcribing the tapes. You know, remember I’m a journalist and I’m a producer. I’m in broadcasting, so unlike, but I’m in news.

So news is quick. You know, I would have to have my story together before while I was in the car writing. 

Steve Cuden: Yes. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: So, yeah. But, so this was different. I would have to take, and sometimes, and, and I’m a person that writes, I don’t write chronologically. Sometimes I write topically, sometimes I write from the end to the beginning and the middle.

Okay. I mean, I, and, and I did that with my thesis and my dissertation. It depends on how my mind captures it and sees it, and it’s something that, you know, that I just know where it’s going to go. What helped me in this story is the fact that I lived it. I had to then create that bridge. You know, with the stories that he told, the stories mom, Margaret told Eleanor, her sister had passed.

But the things that I’d heard about them, you know, even in, in high school and all of that and put that together. So dealing with this became a process of almost topical and chronological. Because I had to deal with the chronology of the early years, his foundation. That was important, but it became topical when they moved from Georgia and then, you know, from New York.

To Charlie Atkins, who was a famous tap dancer with, um, honey Coles, you know, like getting them, uh, Marguerite Mace because when they, Bobby Robinson ripped them off a lot, you know, where they, they didn’t make any money, but that was the way the business was back in the fifties and sixties. They really did not make any money.

Steve Cuden: It still is to a certain extent. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yeah. And, you know, and, and they did not. No, they would say, oh, well all those suits you have and just transportation that costs money so you don’t have any roses. They learned later and I learned from them. 

Steve Cuden: So they had to learn the business through the streets. They had to learn it by doing it, not, not in school anyway.

Right, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: right. But they were blessed when they met Marguerite Mace. You know, who was the former wife of the baseball player? Willie Mays. But she was also married to one of the ink spots back in the day. So she knew music and she took them sort of outta Harlem away from all of that because she said, uh, the street life, the hustling life.

And she. Book took them out to the island, got ’em in touch with Charlie Atkins, who worked with them. And a lot of people don’t know that Charlie Atkins went to Motown records by the time Barry Gordy wanted Gladys Knight and the Pips. Charlie Atkins said, well, I’ll come and teach like the temps and the four tops and all of that.

The rhythm because he started with them with just a tin can, just hitting on a tin can with rhythm. So that’s why the precision of the pip steps are the way they were, you know, very, very precise because of Charlie Atkins and that tap dancing and that rhythmic, 

Steve Cuden: he gave them their style in a sense. Is that true?

Yes, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: he did. Yeah. That’s why the chapter of him is called polishing up their Act. Mm-hmm. Because Marguerite Mays. Found him, you know, he was part of the copacetic and knew about the copacetic. That was sort of a, a group of, you know, great artists, dancers and singers and stuff, and found him. He decided that he would teach them by the time they, Barry Gordy discovered them, he said he would go, but he would have to continue to work with the Pips, but he helped those other groups, the same thing, but you know, it was the Pips that really got that foundation from him.

Steve Cuden: So even though you grew up with, uh, William and and these folks, did you learn anything through the process that you didn’t previously note? Was there any kind of revelation or surprise that you found? I. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Oh, just how nasty the business is, you know? But one of the things, my brother-in-law, he used to, he would take us to various, we could be backstage or we could be at the Waldorf, but he never wanted us.

To be arrived if he were not present, like he would say to me, ’cause he knew that we knew a lot of entertain, ’cause he knew a lot of the stuff that was going on behind with the womanizing, the drugs and all of that. He would never, and he would always say, no you, you’re not gonna go backstage or don’t go into this without me.

He was very protective, you know, of the family. Even though we were exposed and we would laugh and stuff, he would make sure that. Wherever his family would make sure that we were protected and away from all of that. So. By the time I got into music, even though I watched my time moves on album at Brunswick Record, go out the door and buy boxes that weren’t going to stores that I was not going to get any royalties from.

Mm-hmm. Of, because that was the nature of the business. So I learned the dirty side of the business, but as an artist, I was just happy that my music was playing, you know, on the radio because that was the way it was. You know, you, you were just out there, so Well, that 

Steve Cuden: was a big deal, wasn’t it, to get your stuff out on the radio.

It was a 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: big, it was a big deal. And to be number one in record world. I mean, you would think so, like somebody asked, are you still getting royalties? Like, I probably have to go out in a lawyer and find them way back in the day. But, you know, you just accept it. Oh, this was, this was the business. They go out the door.

Backdoor sales, it’s part was part of it. 

Steve Cuden: So one of the things that you rarely get taught in a school or a college or university, wherever that is even focused on the arts in any way, whether it’s music or cinema or whatever it might be, theater. You rarely get taught the business end of the business. And so this is what you’re talking about is that you were sort of learning it by.

Experiencing it. And sometimes that means there were negative consequences. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Negative consequences. And just the streets of the business because a lot of deals were made, you know, just in, in the streets, you know, early. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. On, I mean, even if it is where they gonna, where they gonna stay and, and listening to, you know, my brother-in-law’s.

Stories of having, when they were young, having a ride through the south. Remember I grew up in New York City, so, uh, you know, I say, I always say that that walked my reality from the rest of the world. ’cause we learned socialization on the subway. I grew up with all cultures. Um, I still have a hard time in environments that are just black and white.

I mean, I just came home from New York. I was just so happy to be in, you know, like a global place. 

Steve Cuden: The great melting pot. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yeah. And a great melting pot. And, you know, they grew up differently. You know, but the in experience of riding those buses through the south or those cars, I mean, William tells a story about one time they were stopped by the police and they were on their way to a gig, and they would not let them.

They, they, they were just, they were late too, and they just held them up. They made them sing. They had to just sing. Oh, wow. For them, just for the heck of it. You know, I, I learned about humiliation and stuff that I was not exposed to growing up in New York, just from, you know, where they had to stay and various things that, you know, are not the experiences of a lot of entertainers today.

So, but that was the times. 

Steve Cuden: What do you think made Gladys Knight and the Pips special? Unique? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: First of all, they were good, but their foundation was built on faith. Love, family, and harmony. And I say harmony is more than the blending of voices. It was the blending of spirit. They did everything together.

They voted, you know, they split everything down. You know, four ways, and they stayed together 37 years. Mm-hmm. And that is only because of faith, family love, et cetera. And they laughed a lot. I mean, there was nothing more special than being with them or in the road or in the hotel room listening to all the laughter and the stories.

I mean, that was really so special, you know, to me. 

Steve Cuden: It would be torture. If you had to go 37 years and you were at each other’s throats, that would be horrible. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right. But you know, you had that sultry sound of Gladys, but the pimps were more than a background. Their background could have been the lyric, you know, because everybody could sing with them.

Their background was lyrical. So putting that together, it wasn’t just, if that pip sound is missing, it’s not glass 90, the pips. 

Steve Cuden: What do you think made that sound? Was it just because they grew up together? What was it? So that made that so incredibly wonderful to listen to? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, yeah, because they sang together for so many years.

But also, so you know, like the Jim, you mentioned the imagination, Jim Weatherby. I mean that the producers were good too, but they did not make the background background. They made the background front ground. And that I think is important. And that is important. Everybody sings, knows that song and could sing along with it.

Steve Cuden: That I think that’s, you just hit the key is that the background was not just a background. Right. It was equal to or a part of. That’s right. And then you had Gladys, I, I think sort of making that special little above. Just barely above them. Right. But the PS were amazing. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: That’s right. And you know, and that’s why that story was, and you know, important, I mean the whole group, but when they understand of how they started as the pips and you know, how they got to be Gladys Knight in the Pips, and then how they move that, that harmony of.

Spirit into that singing and that dancing. You know, I, I think, well, I don’t think I know that when they separated, that was always painful, even though they were together 37 years, but, well, a couple of years or so prior to, they. Broke up in 89, got inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 96. Now that in itself is special.

Dionne Warwick just got in a year ago. Dionne came up with them. I see some other people who are just getting in and I’m saying, wow, that really. Is another testament of how powerful they were and how special they were, because they got in and inducted early, and by 1996, Edward, you know, had become ill and he was in a wheelchair, so eventually they would’ve had to separate.

But all of the, the groups or the voices they put behind Gladys. It is not the pip star. 

Steve Cuden: Well, there the music is still played a lot and it’s very familiar in the world. I think probably some young audiences may not recognize this is who that is. I. Uh, they hear the, the music, but they may not recognize it as Gladys Knight and the Pips, but it’s out there, it’s still pervasive.

It’s all over. I 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: mean, they, they recognize midnight train to Georgia, but I was at the airport about three weeks ago and I, I’m sitting in the airport getting ready to fly to Phoenix. And I hear save the overtime. For me, that’s not, that’s a song that many people are familiar with. Yeah. And, and I was listening and I said, wow, that saved the overtime in the airport.

So, you know, their, their music lives on and will live on. 

Steve Cuden: And not everybody from that era has their music playing on and on. Some of ’em are gone. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: No, that’s what I’m saying. Some of them are gone, you know, you know what, what made them stand out in Motown? You know, just like the temps or, um, the Jackson five and all of that.

They were good. They had a special sound, you know, that will, as you say, continue to live on. 

Steve Cuden: Was there any material that you weren’t able to find or get or get anyone to tell you about that you wish you had? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: No, because all of you know, there may have been a couple of songs that were not recorded and we still have access to my brother-in-law’s music because he was still writing and singing, you know, until his death.

Mm-hmm. So we still have access to that. Don’t know exactly if we would have somebody record that. In the future and stuff. We, we have a tendency, the family, you know, when we get together Christmas or whenever I, I go up there that we start, we start singing some of the songs. ’cause he was, you know, he was just a character and then when he would start stomping that foot and singing.

So sometimes we’ll start, you know, joking. I mean, we keep, his spirit is very much alive in us. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. What do you think is your favorite moment from the book? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Oh, do, I mean, I, I live so many moments in that book. I don’t know if there is lots of favorites, 

Steve Cuden: then yeah. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yeah. If there is a, a favorite. But I like telling the root story because I knew.

My Margaret and Mama till I like, because that is so typical of that time in the roots of music where it evolved from gospel music and the church because that was the foundation. So, you know, while it’s not. Say, I can’t say it’s a favorite, but it is a, it is a pivotal moment for people to understand their foundation and their roots, because that’s where the faith, the love, and the family, and it’s, uh, you know, as I said, it started for him in the womb listening to his family talking about, well, there is one story that I do like, I, I have to say, there is one story about him being a little boy.

At church and the preacher was making, uh, you know, got everybody in the church happy, and his grandmother and mother and all of them were crying, just shouting in the church. But he thought the preacher was doing something with him to them. So he went outside and got a rock. I. And walked up the aisle of the church and was going to hit the preacher because he was making his mama and Grandmama cry.

So that, that’s a funny story. And they stopped him. He, he ran outside and got a rock and he had to be like six or seven years old. So. 

Steve Cuden: Oh, that was, that was 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: a funny story. 

Steve Cuden: So in the course of putting the book totally together, did you need to obtain any rights? Did anybody have to sign off? I. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, just the kids.

Steve Cuden: Just the kids? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yeah, just the, just the kids because they’re, you know, my sister and him, they were divorced. So the kids just gave me, you know, the permission to do whatever with their father. And, um, Edward Pats. Wife, because I have a picture of Edward and William and they’re together. Edward was almost like my father.

He was, he was, you know, the, the two of them I can say they, they saved me from a lot of punishment. They, they used to tell my mother, mom, let her come with us, and, you know, so they spoiled me a little bit. Not that I was a, you know, mischievous child, but everybody got on punishment every now and then.

Mm-hmm. So. His wife gave me permission, you know, for anything and everything. Anything else about the group? They were through Williams’ words, you know, so the copacetic, that picture I got, you know, a couple of rides and a lot of the pictures I took myself. So Motown and stuff like that, everybody thinks it’s just huge, huge building.

You go up there, it’s like a little house. You know, and you can’t imagine that all of that stuff went on in that little facility. But it did. 

Steve Cuden: Am I right that it was called Hitsville? Was that one on the Yeah, Hitsville. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right. But it is a tiny structure. But in that structure, you know, they had the ladies going to charm school and learning how to walk and stuff.

They had to Charlie Atkins teaching them how to dance. I mean, that culture, I mean, Barry Gordon was brilliant. 

Steve Cuden: Oh, absolutely. Well, that little structure turned out some gigantic stuff, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: but when they got to Buddha records where Buddha concentrated on just them mm-hmm. Which let them go because, um, Barry didn’t wanna.

Pay them the money that they thought that they should get at that particular time. When they got to Buddha Records, everything exploded. Mm-hmm. The music awards, the Grammys, all of that stuff came about hit after hit after hit hit 

Steve Cuden: after lots of hits. Mm-hmm. Have you thought about writing other books about other performers?

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, you know, it, it is so funny because those four other four books that you mentioned, you know, I was an academic, so those were academic stuff, right? Um, not so far. I mean, because I was close to this one. This was a lab. Of love. I mean, sure. People, yeah, people are, you know, really after me about writing my memoir and all that stuff.

’cause I have so much stuff in it, including music. 

Steve Cuden: You should, you should run your memoir. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Yeah, I’ll, but I said I’m still living it, so you know, there’s still some parts. Although during the pandemic I did sort of capture. Some of, uh, my story, but I also started writing more music. So I have, uh, three songs that I’m probably, well, I started, I thought I was really close and shopping, so I still have that love for music and, you know, I don’t, I, I don’t know.

This one was personal. You know, because I, I lived it. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s your family. It’s your family. Yeah. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: It, it’s, it’s my family. So I don’t know if somebody came up and says, well, we wanna contract you to write like my, my methodology head and my easy ability to write and all of that stuff, and I’m a journalist, I could definitely do it.

Steve Cuden: I assume you’re no longer teaching now that you’re Professor Emerita, or are you still teaching? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: No, I’m not teaching. I helped them write a $2 million grant where I produce seven like mini docs for them on people. So, you know, I’m, I’m still engaged, although I do workshops and, you know, and stuff like that.

I, I, I was, uh, my endowed chair was in ethics. I think that I really need to be out there teaching ethics now. 

Steve Cuden: Oh, well, somebody needs to, 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: yeah. Yeah. And I’ve been thinking there’s, um, a citizenship institute that I may approach about that. And because of the world, that’s the only thing because I, I really like.

Writing the stuff that I wasn’t doing, but it’s so funny, a lot of students, they call me and my students call me Dr. Z. They said, Dr. Z, did you see that or did you hear that? Because that’s the way I would start my class off. You know, we would pick three or four topics and then we would just blow them up.

I really, I’m. Sorta happy that I’m out because I wasn’t, um, you know, after Professor Emerita I went for about, I was on the board of Florida Virtual School. The president died, so they talked me into being interim president for a few months and then, you know, the pandemic and stuff hit. So I was happy. And felt blessed that I wasn’t in charge of anything.

Steve Cuden: Well, I understand that because, ’cause I retired from full-time teaching as the pandemic hit. It was just coincidence. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right, me too. It was that August and I, I was so happy that I wasn’t in charge of anything, you know, although I’m still on boards and stuff, you know, because I’m still very much close to making sure that things are, you know, happening for the right reasons.

Steve Cuden: How important do you think being a teacher for all those years was to you being able to put the book together in such a great way? 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, you know a lot because I had to write a lot, but I always told my students and ’cause they, one time I had my students doing some presentations. I walked in, they were playing my song, time moves on so they knew, but I would tell my students I was 75% artist.

25% academic. So my approach to things in my class, it was always different. Always fun, you know, because I always considered myself an artist. Even with the, all the administration I did. I mean, because even, you know, I was vice president of research. I started. The distance learning instructional technology.

My dissertation was the second in the country on technology and education, so I did all of those things, but again, it was an artistic approach. I don’t like to do anything, you know, the way anybody else does it or the way it was done to me, or I received it. I want it. To engage students, so on, to engage students.

I had to use my creativity. 

Steve Cuden: So I’ve been having the absolutely, one of the most wonderful conversations I’ve had in a while with Lady Deanna Ziegler about her book, midnight Train from Georgia. And we’re gonna wind the show down a little bit right now. So do you have a story that you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny?

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, I could tell you one that’s weird and go As a kid, I used to play with my, I crossed what? And I tell I used to play with my, I crossed because I really believe, remember I was in my head that I had a soul twin. That was in another universe. And remember I wore uniforms. If I think about it, it’s like Star Trek and Catholic School.

We were doing the same thing at the same time and we were both in uniforms. So I played with my, I crossed ’cause I wanted to see everybody else in DU all.

So it was really kind of strange. I’m a Treche fan and really, I really, I, I would be in sitting in Catholic school and my soul twin would be, it’d be in a different environment, a different uniform, but we would be doing the same thing at the same time. So that’s kind of quirky. And I probably go there a little bit now too, but not 

Steve Cuden: as.

Strange. So I, I’ve had the privilege of spending 80 minutes on stage interviewing William Shatner. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Oh, wow. 

Steve Cuden: Yes. Wonderful. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: I, I’m, I’m a Trekkie. I, I love it. And, and also with s author, I can think, and I can meditate. I, I was a Herman fan and stuff. Herman has those things that sort of gave me the foundation that it was okay to be weird.

Steve Cuden: Sure. Well, you know, I think that that’s what makes great creative people great, is that they are, they think of themselves as not, you know, of the norm. They’re a little bit outside the norm, right? That’s right. And so I think that’s fantastic stuff. So, last question for you today, lady Deanna. You’ve already given us a gigantic amount of advice throughout this whole show, but I’m wondering if you can share with us a single piece of advice or a tip that you like to give those who are starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, I, you know, first of all, dream big and. Be bold. You know, I always say that I got my guts from my mother and my humility from my father. If I was just the daddy’s girl that I am, I would probably never go out there. But because of my mother and watching her step out and be so strong, it made me bold, you know, that I could go out and have the guts to do and try new things.

Don’t. Be afraid to try new things and don’t be afraid to fail. Everything is not going to be perfect, but when you get in that stride and you get in that rhythm, you can hear that beat and you can dance 

Steve Cuden: well. That is just fabulous advice because that’s the only way to do it, is to just be bold and go for it.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Right. Exactly. 

Steve Cuden: Lady Dhyana, this has been an absolutely wonderful hour on StoryBeat, and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and for your wisdom. 

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: Well, thank you. You’ve been a wonderful host and I loved your questions.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to.

Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Tune-in and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.