Carly Simon and Tavis Smiley Discuss how they Overcame their Stutters

In a 2008 interview with Tavis Smiley, Carly Simon discusses what it was like growing up with a severe stutter and how she learned to overcome it using rhthym and song. Simon describes her mother teaching her how to “speak with rhythm” as a means of helping her communicate.

As Simon jokes, “I learned to talk with a very bizarre sense of rhythm that my teachers could never quite figure out.” Smiley also talks about his own experience growing up with a stutter, and in his case, listeningto the recordings of Dr. Martin Luther King done by Barry Gordy. According to Smiley, the recordings taught him “to emulate Dr. King’s cadence, which was slow and deliberate and methodical” as a means of getting over his stutter.