The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it's the real thing.

If you ask me what I'd rather be doing, well, I'd rather be home in California, watching TV, polishing my tools and working around the ranch.

I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.

When I played with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in Vegas, the guys used to go, 'Dick, cut it out, man! You're moving around too much on this stage. You're making us look bad!'

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.

Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.

I'd rather be a Jack-of-all-trades than master of one. If I became an icon, where my whole life was music, I would probably have become a vegetable. I wouldn't be able to have all these talents I have today and be an interesting 'character.'

Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'

Every song is like a painting.

I'll just tell you the way it is. You ask me what time it is and I'm gonna tell you how to build a clock.

They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.

You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.

The Confederate flag is a divisive presence - it's the opposite of everything my artistry means and represents.

In any event, I'm proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that's what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.

I look back at Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and especially Betty Carter, whom I admire the most, and I say, OK, they set a standard of excellence. I listen to them not for what they are doing, but to study where they are coming from because, for me, jazz is life experience.

If a song feels good to me, it's not very difficult to make it my own.

My life has been going in ways I never could have dreamed of - doing the closing celebration for the Olympic Games and being appointed the creative chair for jazz at the L.A. Philharmonic. So I've just decided I'll go with my flow and be very prepared.

Brazilian music has been a part of almost every record I've done, and I'd eventually like to record an entire album of Brazilian music.

Jazz musicians have always tended to have cult followings, which is pretty wonderful.

I never called myself a jazz singer. I just call myself a vocalist because I love to sing all kinds of things.

I listen to music all the time, and a lot of the things I cover are the standards of my time, and they work for me.

I have one closet that's just shoes. The woman go, 'Amen,' and the men go, 'Oh my God.' It's color-coordinated from the ceiling to the floor, from evening to casual.

My mother was really amazing and left me with a whole lot of treasures. I miss her terribly.