In my heart I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

People in north Michigan are not different at all from people in southern Alabama. Trust me someone who's spent a lot of time in both places. They're all hardworking simple people.

I had an art teacher who's the reason I got there in high school who encouraged me to go to Alabama. That's where she had gone and kept raving over their art department.

Alabama citizens like the vast majority of Americans respect and value the meaning of decency and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama learning the literature on evolution what was known about it biologically just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular scientific view of the world.

Ladies and gentlemen: There can be no greater investment in Alabama's future than an investment in education.

People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European born in Copenhagen Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe met my dad fell in love and then moved back to Rome where I was raised between Rome and Hamburg.

Like all soul singers I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.