Every time I tried writing my own songs, they would come out very country. I couldn’t fight it, and the more I listened to country music, the more I loved it, and it just became very natural.
I think Charley Pride has been one of the best things to happen to country music, to prove it belongs to everybody.
Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There’s a connection because there’s a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.
The word matters in country music, and it always has. And everybody had lived those words in country songs.
To me, country music tells a story about, and deals with, the way people live their lives and what they do.
I don’t sing country music because I’m not capable of singing other kinds of music; I sing it because I think it’s the most beautiful kind of music there is.
If it wasn’t for Kenny Rogers, I don’t think I would be in country music. He was that guy when I was a kid – his music and ‘Hee Haw’ made me perk my ears up and made me say, ‘What is this? I want to hear more of that.’ He was that catalyst for me to start this whole run in country music.
I love country music.
I always respected country music for its narrative and how it’s so solid, you can get the picture in your mind.
That’s what country music is: real.
I’m not really concerned so much with the industry, except in country music, as long as our fans keep coming to the shows and keep buying the records and we keep having success on country radio.
As soon as I got into country music, it was like hook, line and sinker. I was so focused on country, I ended up leaving all those ’80s hair-band CDs behind – which now I still wish I had, but I was done with it.
It’s hard to come across a true country fan in L.A., but it’s true that the fans are so loyal, once you’re in their circle, you’re in for your entire career. It just really speaks to me. Country music has so much soul and is so heartfelt. I think it’s a perfect fit for me.
I like that old style of country music – it seems to me that a lot of the modern country music is rehashed rock n’ roll.
I was exposed to jazz and blues and gospel and country music and rock, and I was the only kid I knew who knew about that stuff.
Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.
But in those days – in the mid-’50s, early ’60s – there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn’t full time.
1983 – Country music had made a resurgence in this country so I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band and consequently, usually the only black guy in many of the places where we played.
I was tossed all over the place growing up, which I guess prepared me for the music business, but the one thing that has always been there, that has never ever left me, has been country music.
Country music has always sort of been country music.
People might get mad at my style or my delivery and say it’s not country. But the country music that brought me to Nashville? Man, I will always have that on a pedestal.
I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.
