This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories. Up next, a story from Zorro the drummer.

He's worked for musicians the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Frankie Valley, and Lisa Marie Presley. But before he was a renowned drummer,

he was a poor kid from California named Daniel Donnelly. Let's get into the story. Take it away,

Zorro. My life is very much like Forrest Gump.

All the things that were not supposed to happen to Forrest happen.

If you remember in the movie, you know, he's in the White House with Elvis.

All these amazing things to this kid, the unlikely kid.

That was pretty much me.

My mother, Maria, had the enormous task of raising seven children alone in the area known

as Compton, the hood.

So I was straight out of Compton like the rap song says.

She was an immigrant. She actually came from an aristocratic family.

She was the daughter of a Supreme Court justice.

She had married my father. About six months of age, he took the only car we had and abandoned us.

So life was very difficult.

We moved around a tremendous amount because we were getting evicted for either being late with a rent.

And back in those days in the 60s, they could kick you out if you had too many people.

All that has changed now,

but my mother tried to hold down as many jobs as she could, but it still wasn't enough. So we

struggled a lot just to make ends meet. In fact, there were times when we moved, when there was

no money for a U-Haul or anything to move from one apartment to the next. So I would use

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