My blues are so simple, but so few people can play it right

Going to Chicago was like going out of the world.

I was messing around with the harmonica... but I was 13 before I got a real good note out of it.

Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street.

I got your strand of hair, I kiss it day and night.

I wanted to get out of Mississippi in the worst way. Go back? What I want to go back for?

I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi.