“My stage performance is all I got going for me and believe me I perfected it to an art. That's why I'm still singing in the business because of my stage performance-it's exquisite. It is Picasso. It is Rembrandt.”
“My own life planning has always been 10 years ahead. I knew when I was 13 that this was what I wanted to be. Right now I feel about nine months behind where I would have liked to be at age 46. Ten years from now, I'd like to be doing what I'm doing and collecting more interest.”
“What turns me on is to walk into a sold-out venue. The audiences are so much the same as they were in the '60s. It's just an amazing thing. I can't explain it, but I hope it never stops.”
“I am the Alexander Graham Bell of the phone company, the Christopher Columbus of America because after 'The Twist' everything changed, ... Watch the films from 1958 up to 1959, and watch American Bandstand during that time. After the song came out, everything was different.”
“Homey don't quit. What else are you gonna do? It's like those guys in the cartoon they get up in the morning, check the clock and fight all day and after it's over they check the clock and go home. That's how it goes.”
“It takes a real soldier to stay in the music industry and live off the things that have been put before me and be able to survive all this time because it has not been easy.”
