If you smile through your fear and sorrow, smile and maybe tomorrow you'll see the sun come shining through for you.

You've got to change with the public's taste.

I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money.

I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.