Quotes

I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style required pure heart singing.

Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you - a part that's so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you. It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, do we? But it's a force that can light a room. Soul is like electricity, like a spirit, a drive, a power.

Music has been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal.

I started to sing like myself - as opposed to imitating Nat 'King' Cole, which I had done for a while - when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchly, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it. It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it.

I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen. I don't think I'm good because I'm blind, I think I'm good because I'm good.

[on Elvis Presley] He was a person who came along at the right time when he was a white kid that could do his rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues ... and the girls could swoon over him. Nat Cole got in trouble in Alabama when the women swooned over him, got put out of town.

It wasn't that good to care about ... I got in trouble because one guy asked me this question, and I said, 'The King of what?'. He got mad at me. I don't think of Elvis like that because I know too many artists that are far greater than Elvis.

Black people were going out shaking their behinds for centuries, what the hell's unusual about shaking his hips and stuff, and that's all Elvis was doing with copying that ... he was doing our kind of music, doing the Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton and 'Jailhouse Rock', that's Black music, so what the hell am I supposed to get so excited about man?