K-Doe on K-Doe

“I’m cocky but I’m good!”

“On the second month, the twenty-second day, nineteen and thirty-six, eight-fifteen in the morning time, Charity Hospital went to rumblin’ and a-grumblin’! The building started to bendin’, the walls started shakin’, and the doctors said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s happening?’ The people told them doctors, ‘A boy-child is being born on the third floor, at this particular time!’ And I believe about that time the doctor had done finished what he had to do, and the nurses had done washed this beautiful body of mines down and brought it to my mother, and I believe my mother looked up at my father and said, ‘Huh! What we gonna name the boy this morning?’ And my father looked down at my mother and said, ‘Hush! You can’t name him nothin’ but one thing, that’s Ernie K-Doe Jr., and he’s gonna be a bad motor scooter!’”

“What you need to know about Ernie K-Doe is that I got some cockiness I can lend to someone else. You only as strong as you want to be….  I never said ‘No,’ I never said the words ‘I can’t.’ You never know what you can do until you try it, so try it and then you will know.”

“I’m so bad I got to pinch myself in the morning to see if I’m still alive!”

“I’m so slick grease gotta come ask me how to be greasy!”

“James Brown got all his steps from me!”

“They’re fixin’ to put my picture on a box of Wheaties!”

“I’m ready to accept the Nobel Prize!”

“I’m just like a rabbit! When you throw that rabbit in the briar patch, that’s exactly where he wants to be. And that’s me onstage. I’m happy then, and I’m making others happy too.”

“Some people say, ‘K-Doe, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE BOY?’ I say, ‘There ain’t nothin’ wrong with me—I just want to show the public HOW GREAT THOU ART!’”

“Stand up! Bow down on your knees to Ernie K-Doe!”

“There have only been five great singers of rhythm and blues—Ernie K-Doe, James Brown, and Ernie K-Doe!”

“I’m glad that I had the pleasure of making a record that will stand the test of time…. There is plenty of competition for me now, because the young generation has heard about Ernie K-Doe, and now they are going to get a chance to see Ernie K-Doe, and they will find out that their parents was telling them the truth.”

“There ain’t but two songs that will stand the test of time, until the end of the world. One of them is ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ The other one is ‘Mother-in-Law.’”

“I’m here, and I’m back! The big K! You know what the ‘K’ stands for? The king of kings of kings of KINGS! I am back, honey, and ain’t nobody gonna beat me!”

“The boy child hasn’t been born that will replace Ernie K-Doe!”