Singing "Stormy Weather" proved a turning point in my life. My love life, my marriage, was being stormy as hell just then. I felt I was working my heart out and getting no happiness. "Stormy Weather" was the perfect expression of my mood, and I found release in singing it each evening. When I got out there in the middle of the Cotton Club floor I was telling the things I couldn't frame in words. I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, of the misunderstandings in my life I couldn't straighten out, the story of the wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted. Your imagination can carry you just so far. Only those who have been hurt deeply can understand what pain is, or humiliation. Only those who are being burned know what fire is like. I sang "Stormy Weather" from the depths of the private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated. << less