If I want to take a particular form of blues somewhere else I have the equipment to do it but I never even thought of it.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

My people have very subtle slang, inflections and ways of saying things that has little to do with words. If you're from the same place, you'll feel the jargon and know exactly what's happening. Same with any neighborhood cat. What he sees and hears and feels and lives makes him what he is. That's what blues is.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.