Etta James Quotes
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It feels so good to be happy.
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The music was thunder and joy. Lightning bolts of happiness and praise, foot-stomping, dance-shouting, good-feeling singing from the soul.
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All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.
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I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.
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Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together.I would hear him sing every night.
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And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.
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I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean, and I had a place to stay.
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I sing the songs that people need to hear.
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I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.
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When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.
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See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.
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Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.
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My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!
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At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song.
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A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
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When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.
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My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.
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When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.
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It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.
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Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.
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What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.
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This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
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People that can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
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Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.