“I don’t wanna say goodbye for the summer Knowing the love we’ll miss Oh let us make a pledge to meet in September And seal it with a kiss Guess it’s gonna be a cold lonely summer But I’ll fill the emptiness I’ll send you all my love every day in a letter Sealed with a kiss.”

All around as a person, on right decisions, on holding your money, on doing your trade, a good education is a must. I don’t think I would’ve done as good without an education.

To me, there was nothing greater than to play for an audience and to entertain people and that has stayed with me all these years.

I remember Mick Jagger asking me ‘hey, how do you guys feel about us coming over here and taking all the play from you guys?’ I said ‘Well, in a way, you have eliminated all my competition.

All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick – no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.

Session musicians kind of respected me because what I was talking about made sense. That all came from an education. Believe me, education does you more good. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve been around so long.

I did have a big following in the upper New York area. I was at the New York State Fair a few times over the years. I have areas that I say are my areas.

I had been on tour with people like Roy Orbison. I knew Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke. So many great performers.

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue.

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn.

September tries its best to have us forget summer.

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer’s evening, with the haze of that light.

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.

The summer following the winter that my mother took off into something called Women’s Land for what I could only guess would be all eternity.

My father decided that there was no choice but for him to quit his despised job and take me and my brother to the beach for at least the entire summer and possibly longer.