All Dope Can Do For You Is

People Don't Understand The Kind Of Fight It Takes To Record What You Want To Record The Way You Want To Record It.

If You Copy, It Means You're Working Without Any Real Feeling. No Two People On Earth Are Alike, And It's Got To Be That Way In Music Or It Isn't Music.

You Can Be Up To Your Boobies In White Satin, With Gardenias In Your Hair And No Sugar Cane For Miles, But You Can Still Be Working On A Plantation.

I Try To Improvise Like Les Young, Louis Armstrong Or Someone Else I Admire. What Comes Out Is What I Feel.

So I Asked Him To Play "trav'lin' All Alone." That Came Closer Than Anything To The Way I Felt. And Some Part Of It Must Have Come Across. The Whole Joint Quieted Down. If Someone Had Dropped A Pin, It Would Have Sounded Like A Bomb. When I Finished, Everybody In The Joint Was Crying In Their Beer, And I Picked Thirty-eight Bucks Up Off The Floor. . . . When I Showed Mom The Money For The Rent And Told Her I Had A Regular Job Singing For Eighteen Dollars A Week, She Could Hardly Believe It.