Being a blues singer is like being black two times.
Education is the one thing that no one can take from you.
When you don’t have much money, you worry that they’ll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won’t know where you are.
The crowds treat me like my last name. When I go onstage people usually stand up, I never ask them to, but they do. They stand up and they don’t know how much I appreciate it.
I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.
Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.
When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.
It just seemed to me that the way I played was nice. I could hear it myself.
I don’t do much recording anymore, but before I really stopped, I was glad to get five, five cent a record. That’s why when I see people today and they complain about what they get, and I picked cotton for $2.50 a day.
My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess – she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived I probably wouldn’t be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.
Sometimes the proprietors of the little juke joints gave me a couple dollars. I loved that. I’d go back next Saturday.
I’ve always liked ladies all my life. I guess it started with my mom. So every time I saw a pretty lady, I thought, she’s pretty.
There was a lot of other young players around at that time when I was coming, but there was older people like Blind Lemon, which was one of my favorites. I don’t know, just seemed like everybody I heard could play better than me.
I learned another thing from the hurt my cousin gave me – never to give that kind of hurt to anyone else. My revenge was to change a bad feeling into a good one. If I’m working with you and I sense you’re feeling a little insecure, I try to make you feel great. That’s how I get rid of my old hurt. If I don’t do that, my hurt grows and makes me mean and vengeful. But if hurt can change to kindness – that’s something Mama showed me – the world becomes a little less cruel.
To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.
I could see the blues was about survival.
For all the hard times and tough challenges I faced during different periods of my life, I think I was lucky or blessed or both. When things looked bleak, a good guide would appear to set me straight. Someone once asked me about the villains who got in my way, the bad guys who wanted to trip me up or take me out. I don’t remember any. Maybe it’s my nature to remember the good and forget the bad, or maybe it’s my destiny to lock onto the righteous for help.
As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend’s guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.
I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.
Nobody loves me but mama, and she may be jivin too.