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- [Jackson would] sometimes build a song up and up, singing the words over and over to increase their intensity... Like Bessie, she would slide up or slur down to a note. She would also break up a word into as many syllables as she cared to, or repeat and prolong an ending to make it more effective: "His love is deeper and deeper, yes deeper and deeper, it's deeper! and deeper, Lord! deeper and deeper, Lord! it's deeper than the se-e-e-e-a, yeah, oh my lordy, yeah deeper than the sea, Lord." And the last two words would be a dozen syllables each. (en)
- She didn't say it, but the implication was obvious. Mahalia Jackson doesn't sing to fracture any cats, or to capture any Billboard polls, or because she wants her recording contract renewed. She sings the way she does for the most basic of singing reasons, for the most honest of them all, without any frills, flourishes, or phoniness. (en)
- She roared like a Pentecostal preacher, she moaned and growled like the old Southern mothers, she hollered the gospel blues like a sanctified Bessie Smith and she cried into the Watts' hymns like she was back in a slave cabin. They say that, in her time, Mahalia Jackson could wreck a church in minutes flat and keep it that way for hours on end." (en)
- If they're Christians, how in the world can they object to me singing hymns? How in the world can they take offense to that? In the name of the Lord, what kind of people could feel that way? (en)
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