I don’t worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.
One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can’t count it.
If you believe in God, He will open the windows of heaven and pour blessings upon you.
The old Devil gets mad when you’re trying to do good. Pray that God will move the stumbling blocks.
The trouble with records is that they’re too short.
I sing God’s music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.
Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.
I hope to bring people to God with my songs.
I’ll come to any benefit if I see SCLC get all the money.
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
Put your mind on the gospel. And remember – there’s one God for all.
Sometimes you ask God for something and you don’t know what you’re asking.
If you don’t like Louis Armstrong, you don’t know how to love.
The Lord doesn’t like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.
Everybody needs somebody.
Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that’s what the jazz experts say.
God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.
When you are through with the blues, you’ve got nothing to rest on.
This is the place to see the stars – Hollywood Bowl.
They thought I was a success as soon as I started paying the bills.
Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.