I always wanted to grow up fast. I longed for more than the Mississippi Delta could give.

Besides good schools, a good airport, and the Cowboys, Dallas had golf courses, and golf was fast becoming an obsession with me.

I realize I was more of a curiosity to the older Nashville artists than the new ones.

A woman went so far as to hire private detectives to contact me to help bring her out of what she called a hypnotic trance.

Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.

After 14 months of military service, I had a wife, a child, half an apartment, no car, and no job.

There were very few black people in Montana but we never felt out of place.