I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock 'n' roll!

I saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally, he saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley.

Rock 'n' roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters - twelve children.

People called rock & roll 'African music.' They called it 'voodoo music.' They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan - the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.

I look back on my life, comin' out of Macon, Georgia - I never thought I'd be a superstar, a living legend. I never heard of no rock and roll in my life.

I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.

And I think a woman should find it a joy to be female because God made both male and female.