A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.
All of these years that I have been singing, no one has done a documentary about my music as far as I'm concerned.
And, of course, I was singing cheap.
But of course it's different now, the blues is no longer blues, it's green now.
I did it by sneaking out at home to get on the ferryboat and get over to Norfolk.
I sang on Church Street, every place that had a stage.
I thought the best thing you were supposed to do was find somebody and try to sound like them.
I traveled all through the deep South, but I was not getting on the big TV shows.
I was like the queen of the South.
I was trying to do Billie Holiday, because she was the voice to be heard at that time.
If you are speaking about my own songs, I would think so because we were talking about that particular era and I was singing one of my songs that I recorded 50 years ago.
In those days, as I always tell B.B and Buddy Guy and these guys and gave them a place to cry like a man without having to do it.
There are stories that people don't want to talk about that brought this music through.
There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.
There were times that Harvey (Fuqua), myself, B.B King, we almost had to go to jail to sing this stuff.
Unfortunately, I'm a little concerned where the legends are coming from nowadays.
Unfortunately, the young generation, who I believe have their own place in the sun like I had mine; but I wish it was possible there were other ways to have them understand this music was here before they came, and the reason that it was here.
We are trying to prove that the blues lives on forever and anybody in this place can sing the blues.
We have paid a price to sing this music.
When I got through, Duke Ellington stood up and started the applause.
When I saw all of the people I have known all these years, when we got together, it was scary because B.B King and I lived in the same place in Nevada.
In the 1950's she was nick-named "Queen of the Jukebox."
Ruth Brown was a close friend and mentor to singer Bonnie Raitt.
Ruth Brown was close personal friends with Bonnie Raitt, Redd Fox and Cab Calloway.
In 2006, Ruth Brown recorded songs for "Honeydripper", by John Sayles, and was about to fly to Alabama to act in it when she became ill.
Ruth Brown won a Grammy and a Tony in 1989 for "Blues on Broadway" and "Black and Blue".
For the past several years, Brown performed on Thursday nights at the Bootlegger Bistro on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. She used a walking can onstage and sang while sitting down. The club dropped her show in September, 2006.
Ruth Brown died on November 17, 2006 of complications from a stroke and heart attack at a Las Vegas-area hospital.
Ruth Brown's nickname was Miss Rhythm.
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