I'm thankful for every moment.
Before I knew it, I was singing, 'I'm so tired of being alone,' and that's Al right there. From then, my attitude was, 'Let Otis be Otis and James be James. I'm not going to emulate them anymore.'
Free music, to me, is music without boundaries. It's music that... says you don't have to play a blues in three chord change. See what I'm saying? Music that can go from any range.
I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that'll give you the shirt off their back. And I've also found people that won't give you a piece of bread if you're starving to death.
I learned more stuff in church than I did in the world.
The music is the message, the message is the music. So that's my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me - a little ministry called love and happiness.
God told me, 'I gave you the music, Al. Sing the music I gave you - all the music.' So I did.
If I could live my life all over I'd do everything the same; the film in my camera would remain the same; there's no way lord, to leave this love behind.
There's a tendency to make more money at concerts. That's from a financial standpoint. Night clubs have a better feel, better contact between the artist and the audience.
My dad didn't believe that I was going to make it through school, and that was the only thing I was determined to do, because he said that I wasn't going to do it.
I said, 'I'm a rock star. I can't preach in nobody's church. Are you crazy?' Let alone buy one. Oh, I wound up buying one.
Teach success before teaching responsibility. Teach them to believe in themselves. Teach them to think, 'I'm not stupid'. No child wants to fail. Everyone wants to succeed.
Some people believe that fairness comes with obeying the rules. I'm one of those people.
People still come up to me and ask me to sign their records. That's right, records! Man, they don't even make records no more!
I was knocking on people's doors. I knocked on a white couple's door, and I told them, I says, 'Excuse me, but I've been born again.' The guy said, 'Hon, call security. There's a little black guy here talking about how he been born again. Call the police.'
My brothers and I had a gospel quartet, and that was the only music people listened to. But I was already gravitating towards songs by Sam Cooke, and then one day I put on a Jackie Wilson record, and baby, I was thrown right out of the house.
When I was ordained as a pastor, I walked away from secular music for seven, eight years. It took me that time to learn that God is love.
I started recording in '67. In the first part of '68, my first single was 'Backup Train.' That was success to a degree. Four years have passed by since then, and I have managed to come up with a few measly sellers.
There's more to hip-hop than just trying to make everything rhyme, and you find out in life that everything don't rhyme. The music they're cutting is musically fantastic.
They used to talk about it in shop class, say, 'That kid right there can sing,' and I was going, like, 'I wonder who they're talking about?'
