I don't know what happened. I just exploded. I'd never sung like that before. I used to stand still and sing simple, but you can't sing like that in front of a rock band. You have to sing loud and move wild with all that in back of you. Now, I don't know how to perform any other way.

I love being a star more than life itself.

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn't start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not.

I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it

I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle ----- [expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win.