I never even visualized for a second doing what I'm doing.

You're writing it is how you feel. And when you're finished you put your signature on it and you mail it off and that's it. And that's how "Stand By Me" was really.

Most black singers like to slow the word down and, and go directly to your heart. They're not interested in your ears, we just want to go directly to your heart.

Many times I've gone on tours with Paul Anka. He would have someone sitting behind him to keep people from even talking to him. You were almost in a little restricted area there.

I enjoyed singing, I loved song writing, I loved recording. All those things that involves with creating music was great.

I would imagine after the first recording session with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Atlantic Records I began to realize that this is going to be like this for the rest of my life and I knew that what, what they were doing was going to be successful because with each session that we would do, it would get better and better and better, the songs would become better, the, ah, the feeling of success was there and we were all in the middle of that as well.

It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.