I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

If you want me to sing this Christmas song with the feeling and the meaning, you better see if you can locate that check.

They thought I was a success as soon as I started paying the bills.

Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Time is important to me because I want to sing long enough to leave a message. I'm used to singing in churches where nobody would dare stop me until the Lord arrives!

How can you sing of Amazing Grace? How can you sing prayerfully of heaven and earth and all God's wonders without using your hands?