The blacks have their parties, hustle a little liquor, get some things together, and I used to play for those peoples. They'd come get me on time, but they wouldn't bring me back on time... Done picked cotton all day, play all night long, then pick cotton all day the next day before I could get a chance to sleep.
The thing about San Francisco is that it has this kind of magical quality.
Robert Johnson? No, I didn't know him, personally.
I wanted to get out of Mississippi in the worst way. Go back? What I want to go back for?
China is to stock fraud as Silicon Valley is to technology.
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.
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.
I got up one Christmas morning and we didn't have nothing to eat. We didn't have an apple, we didn't have an orange, we didn't have a cake, we didn't have nothing.
I got your strand of hair, I kiss it day and night.
I got that first record out, it came out in '47... Then my name began to ring around. I began to take over. From that point, I tell you, Chicago was in my hand, all the more time that those guys had to listen to me.
If I had a million dollars, I just wouldn't just completely set back. I'd have to get out there and show my face to all these good people who like me, I have to get out there and show my face. The only thing that would set me back if I get sick or something or pass away, that's all you can do about that you know. But as long as I got my health goin' pretty good, I'll show up around here.
Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street.
I was so wild and crazy and dumb in my car. It didn't run but 30 miles an hour. You made do.
