A song stylist is, like, to take an old folk song like "Delia's Gone" and do a modern white man's version of it.

I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read

I used to sing Bill Monroe songs. And I'd sing Dennis Day songs like songs that he sang on the Jack Benny show.

Sam Phillips responded most to a song of mine called, "Hey Porter," which was on the first record.

My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need