"The songs of the working people have always been their sharpest
statement and the one statement which cannot be destroyed. You can
burn books, buy newspapers, you can guard against handbills and pamphlets,
but you cannot prevent singing."
"The Spiritual American road
goes on forever. IT leads across the great divide that separates all
of us, out cultural and ethnic walls. Our unique and oblique art
form, the popular song, leaps the barriers that our instructed
intolerances build. The most racist redneck becomes a jerky rag doll
when he hears a Stax classic and the angry black separatist weeps to the
saddest George Jones song. It's all the same indescribable
communication that songs telegraph to our souls. The lyric that says
the right thing at the right time. The melody that breaks our hear
or makes us dance with joyous abandon. We take them into the private
corners of out hearts so we can sometime remind ourselves in this mean
old world what it's like to be human, to love and to be loved."