Neal Boyd's voice and personality made a big impression at Southeast Missouri State University

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — Before attending the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, before national fame on "America's Got Talent," Neal E. Boyd was an undergraduate refining his chops.

Well over a decade ago, Boyd went from a high school student body president with an amazing vocal talent to a university freshman.

He didn't have far to go — just about 30 miles up Interstate 55 from his hometown of Sikeston, Neal started at Southeast Missouri State University — a small state university in Cape Girardeau, about a two-hour drive south of St. Louis — in 1994. Immediately, his vocal talents made a big impression.

In his freshman year, Boyd brought home a second-place prize in his division at a state college singing contest, the first of much acclaim during his college years.

Partly responsible for those awards was Dr. Chris Goeke. At that time, Goeke (now the chair of Southeast's music department) was a professor specializing in vocal music. Boyd worked more closely with Goeke, his vocal coach, than anyone else at the university.

"Neal, of course, came in with great potential, and he's really followed through and is realizing a lot of that potential now," Goeke said while sitting in room 205 of Brant Hall, the home of the music department during Boyd's time at the university.

In the few years that Boyd attended Southeast, Goeke became close to the tenor, developing a relationship that Goeke describes as "very personal," though not too "buddy-buddy."

"You end up dealing with a lot of issues that are outside of music. You deal with personal issues and personal health and a lot of things that you, you establish a trust and a rapport with a student. ... The student needs to be able to trust the teacher, and the teacher needs to be able to understand where the student is coming from."

Goeke said he had a lot of raw material to work with when it came to his new student.

"As a high school senior coming in as a college freshman, he had a lot going for him that a lot of high school kids don't. His range, while not as developed as it is now, was really pretty good. He was singing higher than most tenors coming into the college would be," Goeke said.

And Boyd continued to develop after his Southeast days, Goeke said. The voice coach said he watched Boyd's first "America's Got Talent" appearance on June 17, and was impressed by what he heard.

When Boyd was a promising vocal student at Southeast, the music department still had its home in the decades-old Brandt Hall, instead of the new facilities at the nearby River Campus that serve as the department's headquarters now. Much of Boyd's time was spent in the grayish-white, small rooms on an upper floor of the building set aside for vocal and instrumental students to practice.

Boyd was a great talent, but as with any college student, Goeke said, he needed some motivation to practice the three hours a day needed to perfect a voice and keep it in shape.

When he wasn't drilling with Goeke or working on his own in a practice room, Boyd spent much of his time as a singer in the university choir, which was then under the direction of Dr. John Egbert. The two met when Boyd was a high school student in Sikeston and Egbert was recruiting for the university. They remain friends to this day.

"Since he was doing so well ... the university wanted to make sure to get its hooks in him, too," Egbert said. "It was one of those things of 'he's from this area, let's make sure everybody knows he went here.'"

"As you can tell, he's an incredible talent," Egbert said. "He, even as a high school student, was singing beyond his years."

When the choir performed outside the college, Boyd brought the house down, Egbert said.

"He had that sort of performance charisma you can't teach to people," Egbert said. "And he's always had that."

A talent like Boyd's was a rare find in Southeast Missouri, an impoverished rural area with fewer opportunities for young singers to develop than in more urban areas. The loss of Boyd's powerful voice was felt, Egbert said, though there were, and are, plenty of other talented vocalists who come to the Southeast program.

"Let's face it, this is not the music mecca of America," Egbert said. "The Bootheel is one of the three or four most economically depressed regions in the country, and there are a lot of little rural schools ... that they're small enough that they don't need to have two music teachers."

Sikeston's vocal program, in a town of less than 20,000, is one of the area's more respected programs.

Boyd's voice wasn't the only thing that made an impression at Southeast, his vocal teachers said. The down-to-earth personality that came through on his first appearance before a national audience isn't an act, Goeke and Egbert said.

"He looked at going into politics ... and he'd be good at that too ... he's the kind of person that, as my mother would say, he never met a stranger. He's the kind of person that he'd walk up on the street and you'd talk to him for five minutes and you'd feel like you've known him for 20 years," Egbert said. "He's just that kind of guy."

Goeke said having Boyd at the university was a "win-win situation" because of his friendly personality.

"I didn't know anybody who didn't like him," Goeke said.

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