A Kiss That Is Never Tasted, 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.

I Think I Copied My Style From Louis Armstrong. Because I Used To Like The Big Volume And The Big Sound That Bessie Smith Got When She Sang ... So I Liked The Feeling That Louis Got And I Wanted The Big Volume That Bessie Smith Got. But I Found That It Didn't Work With Me, Because I Didn't Have A Big Voice. So Anyway Between The Two Of Them I Sorta Got Billie Holiday.

I Don't Think I'm Singing. I Feel Like I'm Playing A Horn...what Comes Out Is What I Feel.

You've Got To Have Something To Eat And A Little Love In Your Life Before You Can Hold Still For Any Damn Body's Sermon On How To Behave.

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.