They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I sing the songs that people need to hear.

They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.

It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.

It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.

But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.

At the same time I was being given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.

Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together.I would hear him sing every night.

I figured I could do It's A Man's Man's Man's World, because I believe it's the truth.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.

And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.

A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.

Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.

I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.

When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?

My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.

I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.

I don't care who's playing. Even if it's my favorite artist, I'm probably not gonna go and see him.

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

It feels so good to be happy.

Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together. I would hear him sing every night.

The Lord doesn't like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.

I never danced a step in my life so naturally. My first motion picture was a musical, and Bob Fosse was the choreographer. I didn't exactly dance for Fosse, I just did the best that I could to do what he taught us to do.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.

I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom.

I would love to do more music, definitely. That is my true passion. Dance is first and then music.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I have thought about the next steps, and you know, they still don't know that I can dance. They don't know it, and it's frustrating me because I feel that it's an edge that I have, and I'm not talking about I took this hip hop class, I'm talking about this is how people actually know me.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

It's always been my dream to do a dance scene with Anthony Hopkins.

Sex in a dance is in the eyes of the beholder. I never thought my dances sexy. I suppose that's because I see myself with my face washed, and to me I look like a rabbit.

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.

We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that.

We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops.

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.