They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that’s what I sounded like.
And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that’s the trouble.
I got treated very badly in Texas. They don’t treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they’d never seen one and neither had I.
