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BiTS INTERVIEW: DEBRA SUSAN & RITCHIE

DAVE PORTER

Ritchie Dave Porter and his life partner Debra Susan are burning a new
path for the blues. The last time I interview him (alone) he was a solo,

principally acoustic artist, making a name for himself with stunningly
good guitar work and an outstanding vocal and lyrical ability. Then

two things happened: He found Fender Telecaster guitars and he found
Debra Susan.

Ian McKenzie spoke to both of them on the telephone to find out what

was happening.

DS: Hello there.

BiTS: Debra. Hello. Nice to speak to you.

BiTS: Is Ritchie with you?

DS: Yes, he’s here.

RDP: Hi, Ian. Yes, I’m here.

BiTS: Hello, nice to speak to you again,
Ritchie. I want to start by talking to Debra
because I guess lots of people really know
nothing very much about you, Debra. Tell

me how did you get into singing in the first
place?

DS: Right, singing. Well, to be honest, I've
sung from as far back as I can remember.
Even when I was like, really, really young,
sort of two and three, I know that's a long
time ago, I was always sort of singing. Then
I used to sing at the little local Primary
school. I’ve just always sung. I used to make
little bits of things up on the keyboard as
well because I play the keyboard a little bit. So really, for as long back as I can remember, it's
just something that came naturally. I was always sort of humming on my way walking to school,
then walking back from school as a youngster, and I was always humming and singing along in
the class. Much to the joy of the teachers or dismay, I'm not quite sure which, but there you go.
So really sort of, as long as I can remember and then as I got older, I started taking it a little bit
more seriously. It wasn't until I was in my late 30s though, I was living over in Ludlow in
Shropshire and I got the name of a lady – she’s an ex-professional opera teacher. A lady called
Margaret Davies. Absolutely marvellous, she was. So I went to her for some vocal coaching and
then did sort of the traditional exams. So I learned like all the music theatre, a lot of music theatre
repertoire because I'm quite a big fan of music theatre, and I learned how to sing opera and all
that sort of thing.