I'll keep working as long as I live because singing has taken on the feeling of joy that I had when I started, when my only responsibility was to sing well.
I love singing - singing is what I'm famous for doing. Now it's turned into things I am famous for doing - like having rows with my mum or about my boyfriend, so it does get irritating.
When I started really singing I was 17, 18 years old. I used to go around trying to be a singer in the Bronx. My knees would shake but I learned by doing.
When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.
That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.
It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.
I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman.
