Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Wilson Pickett
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American singer Wilson Pickett.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
If you get the disco or rap format on the radio, an R&B record doesn't fit, because it will break up the mood.
The R&B will always prevail. It will always last. The blues will always last.
I don't want to stay in the graveyard era of music.
I can't keep singing 'Midnight Hour' for the rest of life. I gotta change.
There are no Soul singer Wilson Pickett singers in disco.
One of the secretaries at Atlantic Records caught me pinching one of the other secretaries on the butt one morning. She said, 'My, you sure are wicked.'
If I wasn't in show business I don't know what I would have been - a wanderer or something, you know? But God blessed me with the talent and the chance. I knocked on enough doors, and this is what I can give myself credit for.
I perform as much as I can, to the extent I don't want to sell myself out.
Soul is R&B.
I don't want to die on the stage.
I took five hit records to Memphis, and '634-5789' was stolen from me totally. Those songs are worth millions. I've never understood how someone could just steal your song like that.
I think people are entitled to have a new album by Wilson Pickett in their homes every year.
I thought wasn't nobody supposed to get gold records except those people on Motown, like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross.
All disco singers are non-professionals who can't do live shows. It loses what black people have created.
If I'm not getting played on the radio and I'm not making any money, I have nothing to lose by telling the truth.
Me, I'm very happy with the fruit I've gotten out of my career.
When I started buying my mother all these homes, like a second home in Kentucky, where I moved most of my family, they began to rely on my wallet.
Sometimes it's more than you can bear to be on the road and take care of all that other stuff.
Detroit, my lord, what a place.
People like me and Aretha Franklin and Joe Tex, we had predicted that inside of five years disco would be all over, that it was just a fad. But we didn't anticipate being knocked out of the pocket altogether.
Motown was pop, Atlantic was R&B.
I have boxes of gospel LPs and 78s. The Davis Sisters, the Soul Stirrers, the Pilgrim Travellers. I love all that.
I made two or three albums with money from my own pocket, but I couldn't get them released or played on the radio. I got tired of beating my brains out. I got very depressed. I took a break from the business. Then I got bored with that and had to come back.
Anytime you've got artists singing songs, doing grooves that they don't want to do, it's terrible.
The older songs were better songs, because they had lyrics with a story to tell. Aretha and Otis told stories.
All my ideas have blown away with the wind.
I don't do disco.
I have allergies, so I use an inhaler, but it's all right.
I got very bored with the music business.
I'd lived in New Jersey for 30 years. That was long enough. It's too crowded up there, and it's a very dangerous place to live. There's a whole lotta crime.
I heard Otis Redding singing 'These Arms of Mine' and I knew that was the band I needed.
When I make a record, I want to use some electronics, although I still want to keep things pretty basic.
The baddest woman in my book... my mother. I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood.
Joe Stubbs was very jealous of me, especially after 'I Found a Love.' We'd be on stage and he'd lay traps for me, make me look bad.
We used to have a lot of fun. We got cheated out of a lot of money, but we seemed to enjoy ourselves anyway.
I write about things that are really happening, serious things.
I took a long rest period. I didn't know heads or tails of what anybody wanted; it seemed as if R&B had been put on the shelf.
I don't bother anybody, but I don't let people walk over me.
If you leave God and go to the devil, you're going to go to hell.
You see, I wanted to sing gospel, but I wanted to make me some money, too.
Disco music can only take you so far because it's plastic.
You can talk about all the great guitarists you want Jimi Hendrix or whoever but as far as I'm concerned, Duane Allman is the best. No one ever played like him.
I used to get a lot of fan mail.
I had recorded a song 'If You Need Me' for the Correc-Tone label, but it was a small label and distribution was a problem.
I live in Virginia alone, and sometimes there's too much time to think. So you turn on the TV, but sometimes that don't do, so you turn the music on, and sometimes that don't do, and so you try and write a song, and sometimes that don't do... So you just take it as it comes.
Singing like I do is very hard, and as you get older, it's getting harder and harder all the time.
Put your hands on your hip, let your back bone slip. Do the Watusi, like my little Lucy.
First you harmonize, then you customize.
Soul ain't nothing but a feeling.
I'm going to wait til the midnight hour, that's when my love begins to shine.
Berry Gordy believed in owning the artist for life and controlling everything: the money, the station wagons, everything.
I used to always have a pretty high, little clear voice, but as I got older, I got a little cornbread in it.
I'd start to sing, and the record would start skipping. You'd be skipping along with it. Those were the days, my friend. We'd look so stupid, but the kids loved it.
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