Eunice Kathleen Waymon Quotes
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I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.
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I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I'd rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I'll leave it to them.
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I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.
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"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
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It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.
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I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I've done my whole life, without thought.
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I believe the time will come when the whole definition of pop music will change. It will get to the point where a song will not be a good song until it has a high level of creativity in writing and performance. In other words, in order to be popular, songs will have to meet these high standards.
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
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I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.
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I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.
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I have a cultured manner of speaking.
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Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.
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I am particular about the seating of the audience - also about how much money they pay - but most of all where they are seated. If I am going to sing something intimate, who am I going to sing it to?
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Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.
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My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That's how I see my voice.
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Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I'm singing her music or not.
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My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.
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The worst thing about that kind of prejudice... is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.
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I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.
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Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.
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I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat - a sailboat. I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second.
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Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
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I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.
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The pressure of show business is on all the time and show business is a fickle business. Whatever is popular now - that's all that counts. I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I'm doing and why.