Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy.

My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.

I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.