Like countless other musicians, Mitch Winehouse gave up his dream in favor of getting a steady job to support his family. He was a professional singer in the '70s, but left the circuit to work as a cab driver and raise his children.

"I put it on the back burner," he tells Spinner. "When Amy started to perform she'd get me up on stage and we'd do a couple of songs."

Amy, of course, is his daughter Amy Winehouse, who captivated the world with her sultry voice and littered tabloids with her personal foibles. Now the family is forging ahead and Mitch is singing his own tune.

"The whole idea with the album was I would stand up and be judged by my own work," Mitch says. "The songs would be standards, but not standards that everybody immediately recognizes."

'Rush of Love' includes covers of tunes of jazz and lounge tunes like 'How Insensitive' by Antonio Carlos Jobim. There are also four new songs penned by veteran British songwriter Tony Hiller.

As for Amy, an album is in the works. And, according to dad, she is doing just fine.

"She doing better now," Mitch says. "She has been clean for two and a half years, about that. I'm not saying her problems have gone away, because they haven't. She's dealing with it."

Mitch doesn't take credit for teaching his daughter how to sing, but the family certainly provided her with a musical upbringing.

"In my house there was always music, there was dancing, and singing," Mitch says. "And it was natural for my kids to sing as soon as they could talk. I remember Amy standing on the table and I would leave a word out of a song and she would fill the word in."

But if Mitch Winehouse is using the spotlight to pursue his own ventures, it's not only for the singing. The 61-year-old year old cab driver also appeared in a documentary that explored the government's role in the dealing with drug addiction, and even testified before a Parliamentary committee to discuss the discrepancies.

"If somebody is a drug user in London, and they voluntarily want to come off drugs but they can't afford to put themselves in a private clinic, it's almost impossible for them to get into a residential program," Mitch says. "What we found was that there are some people that are so desperate that want to get off drugs but can't get the help. We found a lot of people are actually turning to crime."