I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off.

I believe it is possible to tell what sign some people were born under by watching their eyes, watching how they walk, how they talk.

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.

I was sometimes jeered by black soldiers who wanted me to sing something besides country music.

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

I don't care what the religion is called; as far as I'm concerned, one God, the God I adhere to, is in charge of all of them.

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.