“I remember when I used to listen to Bessie Smith sing ‘I hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down’. I’d fix my mouth and try to make my tones come out just like hers.

And I’d whisper to myself that someday the sun was going to shine down on me way up North in Chicago or Kansas City or one of those other faraway places that my cousin Fred and the other Negroes that roamed away from New Orleans talked about.”

Mahalia Jackson