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.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.

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

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

The music was thunder and joy. Lightning bolts of happiness and praise, foot-stomping, dance-shouting, good-feeling singing from the soul.

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