Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.

The beast in me Is caged by frail and fragile bars.

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

Some gal would giggle and I'd get red, and some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head. I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

He went up to heaven, located his dog. Not only that, but he rejoined his arm.

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 wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.