Hi, I'm Cynthia McFadden. Here with today's her take is a new series we're doing here at

Nightly News where we take a group of really interesting women, some of them famous, some of

them not, and get their take on their lives and this country and what it means to be a woman today.

I talked to Esther Dean. Now, you definitely know her music. You may not know

her name. I didn't really know what to expect when we went to a little recording studio in Times Square,

but the woman I met was truly extraordinary, and when you hear her life story, you'll think so too.

I hope you'll enjoy

listening to what Esther Dean has to say as much as I enjoyed talking to her. Here we go.

So tell me about being a little girl. Yeah. No daddy in the family. Right. Youngest of five.

Not much money.

No connections to the bigger world.

And you are bubbling over with this dream, with this idea that you are going to make it.

Yeah.

Did it occur to you that the odds were against you?

Nope.

I had blind ambition.

I had music in my spirit, and I heard music, and I was already recording music.

Because back then, you know, you had tape players.

You had the tape players.

So they used to have a perm tape that told you how to put the perm on, right?

Just for me.

And I would use that tape, and my mom would record the songs off the radio. My sister would write down lyrics from the song, which at a young age, she was writing down lyrics.

...