I started singing on the radio in Los Angeles. I sang blues, but I would tend toward country blues.
I've always had real good taste; no matter how poor I've been, I've had good taste in clothes.
My mother was 13 when I was born. My childhood was pretty frantic, to say the least. My mother left when I was about 5, and Daddy started me singing in clubs. Then I started singing on the radio in Oklahoma City when I was 7.
It has been tough being a mother of two daughters without a co-parent because I think I was a child myself, as my mother was.
There's a lot of things that you can do where you don't have to have a lot of money. Going to the drive-in, which cost a dollar, and we would make food to take with us to the drive-in. That was a big thrill.
I went to work in a woman's home in Los Angeles as a mother's helper. I worked there about two years. Went to school with all rich kids. I was the only poor kid in the school, and I was already insecure. But my voice saved me because I sang in school, and I was real popular because of my voice.
I was married a lot, but I didn't stay married very long because I didn't seem to be able to choose somebody that was a stable man.
Cybill Shepherd's mother - her name is Patty - is a good friend of mine.
There's a certain amount of pain and heartache that goes with being the mother of a star and that all the mothers experience. It's not being with them as much as you like.
People that I have known that have been extremely creative, people in the business, they have always been influenced by their mothers. Their mothers are the ones that created whatever it is - the urge to create.
