Beyonce is cool, and she can really sing.

I started listening to gospel when I was a little boy and my grandmother used to rock me on her lap.

There are so many songs in my heart and in my brain. I wake up at 2 in the morning, and I have to get up and sing them. There are so many of them, it's ridiculous.

People are living a lot longer these days and not preparing for it. I'm in the gym and, you know, using my voice.

My mother turned me onto St. Jude back in the days when I was wild and crazy. She took me to the shrine on Rampart Street.

Singing is a prayer to me.

I worked with the Neville Brothers for 40-some years on the highway, and up and down since I can remember - funk from New Orleans.

I used to always sing my way into the movies and the basketball games or whatever. I'd sing for whoever's on the door, and they'd let me in. I used to think I was Nat King Cole back in the day, you know. So I'd sing something like, 'Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you,' and they'd let me in.

'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.

I never left doo wop.