Now that I'm gettin' old enough to get some money, I'd like to have some money. I don't get much made, I need to conquer a big chunk of money. Not quit playin' but quit playin' so hard.

Now that I’m gettin old enough to get some money, I’d like to have some money. I don’t get much made, I need to conquer a big chunk of money. Not quit playin but quit playin so hard.

I went to school, but they didn’t give you too much schooling because just as soon as you was big enough, you get to working in the fields. I guess I was a big boy for my age.

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.

My grandmother, she say I shouldn’t be playing. I should go to church. Fially, I say I’m going do this, I’m going do it. And she got where she didn’t bother me about it.

If you got something you don’t want other people to know, keep it in your pocket.

Man, you don’t know how I felt that afternoon when I heard that VOICE and it was my own VOICE.

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

I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn’t play ball too good – I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn’t preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing.

I was so wild and crazy and dumb in my car. It didn’t run but 30 miles an hour. You made do.