On 2 February 1991, Harold McMillan (BFT) interviewed Ernie Mae Miller (EMM) on audiotape.

EMM: I was born here in Austin in my grandparents' home, February 7, 1927. When I was born my grandmother brought my sisters in and said, "Come look at what Uncle Tom brought you." They said, "Oh, a sack of pecans!" And they looked at me, and they were very disappointed that I was a baby and not a sack of pecans.

And then, when I was 4-years-old, my grandmother had a lot of old 78-rpm records and an old Victrola. I would just stand up on a stool and wind that old Victrola and listen to these records! And some of those songs I still remember. Then when I was 5-years-old, they would run me out of the kitchen and say, "Go on into the living room and play the piano." I'd run in there and bang, bang, bang away. And one day, I played a song, "Jesus Loves Me," because I had been going to Sunday School, and that's about the only song they would sing every Sunday, "Jesus Loves Me." And somehow, it just came to me and I played "Jesus Loves Me." That was my first, my first song to be played. And that gave them the idea that I might be a pianist or a musician of some type.

So I started music lessons about 6, and my music teacher told them, "This girl, she'll never be a concert pianist, but she might play in a bar room." 'Cause she would play the song and give me the music... I learned to read the notes and things; she would give me the music; and I would take the song home and learn some of it like it was and play the rest like I wanted. That's the way it started: I'd adlib it. Either I'd just play it by ear because she had played it, and I'd go back playing it, and she'd say, "Well, that sounds better than the way I played it!" Not really, but she'd just be saying it.

From then on, at 9-years-old, I started working. I played for a nursery school, it was called Howson's Nursery on Angelina Street, which was later known as the [Howson] community center for the neighborhood. I would come from school and play for the nursery school. I knew some nursery rhymes and the little kids would sing. They paid me $2 a week, which was just about... It paid my lunch money, and I'd have a few pennies left. Then I went on through school.

In high school I played in the high school band, played tenor saxophone. When I finished high school, I went on to Prairie View and played in an all-girl orchestra, a sixteen-piece, all-girl orchestra. I put down the tenor sax because they didn't need a tenor sax; they needed a baritone sax. So I bought a baritone and played the baritone sax for this girls band for three years, and we toured all over the United States. Then, in my third year, I dropped out of school and got married. And my husband thought, if I still wanted to play music, which I definitely had to do, I'd have to just do a solo. So that's why I just play the piano, and playing jazz and easy listening music, cocktail piano. That's the way I started. I started on a little place on West 6th, in 1949.

BFT: Your mother?

EMM: 'Played some for church; my grandmother also played, but they didn't play the type of music I play. They played the hymns and what not. That really got me interested. I played for Sunday School for a few years. When I was asked to play for choir, junior choir or children's choir, I was already working. And the night they would have choir practice, I would already be at work, so that cut that. But I would go to church all the time.

BFT: Which church was that?

EMM: Ebenezer Baptist. I was baptized at 7-years-old. My grandparents... My grandfather was L.C. Anderson of Anderson High School. I was born at his house. My mother is Lizzie Anderson Crafton. My maiden name is Ernest Mae Crafton. My mother and father divorced, oh, about three years after I was born, so I didn't know too much of my father. My grandfather took the place of my father, because he was a real good father image. He really loved us and brought us up the way we should have been brought up.

BFT: What did your parents, and brothers and sisters...

EMM: I had two sisters; we were three girls. I had two older sisters. I was the youngest. One sister now is in South Carolina, the other is in Austin. But I was the only one who followed music.

BFT: What did you mother think about you playing music? Was it okay for you?

EMM: Yeah. There was a young lady going here to school at Sam Houston College, her name was Cleave Smith. She was from Waco, and she was a Music major. And she was so interested in me, she would take me home with her in the summer time with her -- and she taught me a lot of music, too. They all knew I had some, had talent, and they tried to develop it. I just did things. When I didn't always like the way things were written, I would change it and do it my way. I listen to records now and try desperately not to copy anyone else's style. I might listen to it, but I have to do it my way. Doing this has kept me working since 1949. I have six children, but I would work pregnant and everything else about up to two weeks before the child was born, and then I would go back about two weeks after it was born. And music is just really a part of me. Without being able to play and entertain, I think I would be at least a third lost in my life.

BFT: When you were a child, did you have specific role models, or was the community such that it made it natural for you to do that?

EMM: No, I just think it... I used to like to go to the movies, and I'd try to imitate the movie stars or there were little things that I picked up. I would cut the edges off and change it and make it mine, and change it like I want it to be. Then, a lot of my teachers thought that wasn't right. They didn't like that. They wanted me to play it just like Bach or Mozart or whoever wrote it; so I got out of the classic stuff. I just wanted to do the stuff that made me happy and made a lot of people happy. And I think that's doing a lot more than what some people do, even if they do play classics. My little bit of something made even the, tamed even the wildest beast. They kind of frowned on what I did. But now I'm even asked by teachers and by the schools to appear on programs and things. So I guess I just got a little ahead of myself.

BFT: Give me a visual characterization of the neighborhood.

EMM: I went to a school called the Olive Street School, and that was about two blocks from my home. Originally, it was one of the first... It was the second high school for blacks. But then, as Austin grew, and they came from Olive Street and built this high school on Pennsylvania Avenue which is now Kealing Junior High School. And then, after they outgrew that, there was a high school on Thompson, which was the third high school. And then, the next one, of course, was the one on Mesa Drive, which was L.C. Anderson. However, the first three were previously named for L.C. Anderson's brother, who was E.H. Anderson, Ernest H. Anderson. And this, his brother L.C. Anderson after him, he was younger; and E. H. Anderson died, he took up almost the same trend. They both were educators. And the high school was changed from E.H. Anderson to L.C. Anderson High, which it still is L.C. Anderson.

BFT: So education has been important in your family background.

EMM: Right. I didn't finish college. I just about got to the end of it, but with six boys and working, staying busy, I just didn't get a degree.

BFT: Your grandfather?

EMM: He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to slave parents. His mother was a Henrietta Wittis. And it's funny, but his father was named Henry Wittis, but they were slaves. And the name Anderson was the name of the slave masters. When the kids were born, they had to take the slave owner's name. And so he was born in 1853 and he died in 1938. He was... Also, his brother was second principal of Prairie View [Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College, now Prairie View Agricultural & Mechanical College], and he was the third. Prairie View then was just a land grant college. And then he stayed in Prairie View until 1888. That was the year that my mother was born and her mother died three days after she was born. Then he married my mother's mother's sister. And she was the one I knew as my grandmother; she stayed with us. They moved to Austin, and he was the principal at Anderson High School for 32 years.

BFT: Do you know what year it was they moved to Austin?

EMM: She was born about 1888, and she was about 3-years-old. I have a history book in there, but I don't remember. But I'm thinking my mother said she was about 3-years-old. Do you want me to get the book? The high school called and asked me to give the history for black history week over there on the 27th, so I'll have to get that book and really get it all cleared up.

BFT: So you came from a sizable family and education was important. And you ended up being the gifted person musically. Say more about the first paying gig at 9-years-old...

EMM: It was this old lady, her name was Miss Camila Thompson, and she used to cook soup for the kids every day; that was their meal. And she had heard me play at church a little bit for the little kids in Sunday School. We were all little kids really. She was a Sunday School teacher, and one day she asked me if I would come over and play little nursery rhymes for the little kids at nursery school. I told her I would, and she said, "We'll give you $2 a week." I thought that was good money at that time. I'd leave school, which was just about two blocks from the nursery school, and I'ds go by there after school and the children would sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater," quite a few other little nursery rhymes. I would give them a little music sing-along for about 30-minutes every evening, five days a week. That's when I started working. From then on. When I finished high school at fifteen and then I went on to Prairie View, I was always playing around in little things. I called it a job.

BFT: Do you have specific memories from being a high school musician?

EMM: I played with Mr. Bill Joyce. He was our band director, really. My mother said he wanted me to be in, and I was very interested, and I always wanted to play in a band. But at the time, my mother wasn't able to buy me an instrument. And so, he had an old broke down C-melody saxophone, which now is obsolete. I don't know if they even use them any more. I started with that, and it took me two weeks to get that in a little band. And it took me two weeks to get in the big band. And one night at a PTA meeting, he gave me a little award for being able to get in the big band in two weeks, which was $5. And I thought that was so big! His daughter had finished high school, and his daughter played tenor saxophone. When she finished, she didn't care to play anymore. So, he let me use her real nice tenor saxophone, and our band won contest after contest. Anderson High School band! We'd go up to Prairie View and play in this contest for the state. Four years I was in the band; we won every time we'd go down there.