My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.

Rock 'n' roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands... I went that way because I wanted a home of my own. I had a family. I had to raise them. Let's don't leave out the economics. No way.

You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.

In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.

In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.

Music should be made to make people forget their problems, if only for a short while.

Had I been pushed like Colonel Parker pushed Elvis, had I been a white boy like Elvis, sure, it would have been different.

A contract is an ask game, and if it asks for an hour, and I submit to an hour, then it's an hour. When I look at a contract, I look at the obligation - where, when, how long, the compensation. If I agree to it, that's the way it is. I have an obligation. They have an obligation.

It's not me to toot my horn. The minute you toot your horn, it seems like society will try and disconnect your battery. And if you do not toot your horn, they'll try their darnedest to give you a horn to toot, or say that you should have a horn.

Music is science. Everything is science. Because science is truth.

I wanted to play blues. But I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters, people who really had it hard. In our house, we had food on the table. We were doing well compared to many. So I concentrated on this fun and frolic, these novelties.

My first job at Gleason's Bar in Cleveland was $800 a week, when I was making $92 a week with overtime at the automobile plant.

That's all there was in our house: poetry and choir rehearsal and duets and so forth; I listened to Dad and Mother discuss things about poetry and delivery and voice and diction - I don't think anyone could know how much it really means.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song 'Yesterday.' Listen to the lyrics.

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.

I made records for people who would buy them. No color, no ethnic, no political - I don't want that, never did.

The Man Upstairs is taking care of me.

The media dresses things up. There's a lot of inaccuracy.

What the heck is a king? I'm a cog in the wheel.

I should have been a son of Einstein.

I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know, there are poets who don't rhyme? Shakespeare did not rhyme most of the time, and that's why I do not like him.

If you want to release your aggression, get up and dance. That's what rock and roll is all about.

Praise doesn't mean anything to me. I don't judge myself.

I directed my music to the teen-agers. I was 30 years old when I did 'Maybellene.' My school days had long been over when I did 'School Day,' but I was thinking of them.