If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you're going to the bank to borrow money.

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience.

When you don't have much money, you worry that they'll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won't know where you are.

It just seemed to me that the way I played was nice. I could hear it myself.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

Notes are expensive... spend them wisely

Singing about your sadness unburdens your soul. But the blues hollers shouted about more than being sad. They were also delivering messages in musical code. If the master was coming, you might sing a hidden warning to the other field hands . . . The blues could warn you what was coming. I could see the blues was about survival.