Apollo Theater Quotes

I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That's how I started with doo-wop. Now I've come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.

It's always good to play New York. The Apollo is a great gig. I loved that.

At first, Hendrix went and became a superstar in London, but if he walked past the Apollo in Harlem, no one would know who he was. I'm the hip-hop version of him.

The first time I heard Clyde McPhatter singing with the Dominoes at the Apollo I just fell off my chair

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.

When Malcolm X was assassinated I was working at the Apollo. They brought his body to the Unity Funeral Home, which was around the corner.

When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, 'I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn't be as hard on you as James Brown would be.' But we came out marching like soldiers.

Being at the Apollo, I was always starstruck.

Once, when we were playing at the Apollo Theater, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don't know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph.

The night I won at the Apollo, I was only doing it for the $10.

If it's Saturday night, and you're sitting on your couch watching 'Showtime at the Apollo,' then you're not a man's man.

James Brown's Live at the Apollo is not just a musical whiplash, it's a spiritual cleansing. You can just close your eyes and see him doing the splits, kicking the mic stand and doing a 360.

I met Obama once, backstage at the Apollo in Harlem.

The Apollo is where all the greats performed.

I'm from Harlem.

My mother sang jazz and opera - she even performed at the Apollo on Amateur Night.

Harlem's Apollo is probably the most well-known music hall in the world.