“Travel where you will and grow to be a man
And sing what must be sung, poor boy
Sing what must be sung.”
Greenback Dollar (1963)
Context: When I was a little baby, my mama she said "Son.
Travel where you will and grow to be a man
And sing what must be sung, poor boy
Sing what must be sung."
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Hoyt Axton 21
American country singer 1938–1999Related quotes

Silence and Awakening
The Inevitable: Contemporary Writer Confront Death (2011) Edited by David Shields & Bradford Morrow

Source: Mark Donnelly: Q&A with the slimming anthem singer https://www.canadianbusiness.com/lifestyle/mark-donnelly-qa-with-the-slimming-anthem-singer/ (March 13, 2012)

On leaving the music business in 1979,in an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning (12 August 2007) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/30/sunday/main2221286.shtml
Context: A lot of people would have loved me to keep singing … You come to a point where you have sung, more or less … your whole repertoire and you want to get down to the job of living. You know, up until that point, I hadn't had a life. I'd been searching, been on the road.

Interview on CNN's "Larry King Live"

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 2
Context: I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

If Thou would'st have Me sing and play.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)