Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love wandering around the vintage shops.
I'm always lobbying for the irrepressible strength of love.
San Diego is where I really started to get my legs, musically.
Being a singer, it's feast or famine. You have to hit it when it's hot.
I'm very thankful to San Diego for the musical opportunities it gave me.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
This is one of the major purposes of soul and jazz music; to state what you feel.
I'm really just a singer that's trying to make some music that strikes to the heart.
The voice is probably supposed to have some cracks and pops and some mistakes in it.
I can sing the blues and I have sung the blues. I feel it internally when I'm singing.
Waving to the Queen after singing Amazing Grace at Buckingham Palace, that was pretty cool.
Music that speaks of politics is less listened to than the music of partying, but it's still there.
Sometimes I'll be in circles, and I'll say I'm a jazz singer, and they have no idea what that means.
A Change Is Gonna Come' has always been a powerful song for me as it comes from a place of vulnerability.
But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.
The protest songs of the 1960s and 70s managed to blend political and societal views with music from the heart.
When there's an imbalance in terms of what people get to hear, then that's negative. Then blues, jazz, it will die.
I was quite shy as a child. My sisters were the gang leaders, my brothers were the enforcers and I was a tag-a-long.
One critic called me nothing but a blues singer, as though that was a slight. That is the highest compliment there is.
My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.
A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.
The umbrella of jazz is so big and so wide . If you don't like saxophone, try a vocalist, if you don't like vocalists, try guitar.
My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.
The funny thing about nationalism is that there are two sides to it. Some parts of it are beautiful, but there's an ugly side as well.
And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.
What a Wonderful World' is a love song to nobody and everybody. I'm thinking about songs like that in my writing with 'Take Me to the Alley.'
It's been some surreal moments, you know from performing at Buckingham Palace to having dinner with Stevie Wonder, it's been an amazing ride.
I was 5 years old when I first broke into my mother's records and played Nat King Cole, and sat alongside the stereo and listened to Nat's music.
Writing from a personal experience can bring about this emotion and power of emotion that can be instantly connected to the instrument, my voice.
As well as having a really strong message, sometimes an artist needs to couple their sentiment with something that's soulful and groovy to listen to.
I think every person who gets a football scholarship thinks the potential for great success in college - and maybe even a career in the NFL - is possible.
I think myself, Jose James, and Robert Glasper are expanding the language - really reminding people that the umbrella of jazz is large and all-encompassing.
My overwhelming memory of my childhood is the constant busyness in the house. I am seventh out of eight kids - five boys and three girls - plus my mom, Ruth.
I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.
My sisters started to cook at nine and, being one of the youngest, I wanted in on it, too, so I began at six on potato-peeling duty as french fries were my thing.
Even if you've being playing together for years, there'll always be something new. You're constantly back phrasing, front phrasing, singing faster, singing slower.
I was in rehab for nine months, and I needed some solace and distraction. I was in town one day and I sort of stumbled into a jazz jam session, and kept going back.
You know Bakersfield was full of workers from the south, from Texas and Arkansas, and they brought their gospel and blues with them. And that's the sound I grew with.
Because I am away so much, I try to establish home in people, rather than places. For example, wherever I get together with my brother the place we're in becomes home.
Whether you like punk, grunge, or early rock and roll, there's probably something in there you've been living with your whole life and you didn't even know it was jazz.
'Take Me to the Alley' is about trying to uplift the lives of people who have been afflicted, maybe the homeless or somebody with an illness, or maybe they're refugees.
If I can hear the music then no, I don't hit a wrong note. But if I can't hear the music because the audience is screaming or the sound system is bad, then I'm subject to stray.
I can be a bit nerdy so I need a good, clearly marked map, as you can miss out on some of the coolest places in Amsterdam if you don't have a wander down the little side streets.
Nat King Cole's lyrics were speaking to me, almost like fatherly advice, when I was listening to him alongside the console stereo player. So that music and that influence comes out of me.
I like to absorb the atmosphere and explore wherever I'm working or visiting, so I can't say there's any type of place I don't like. When you travel you have to be open to new experiences.
Gospel music was very prevalent in my house. My mother also loved Nat King Cole. That was some of the first music that I heard. Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole and the Mississippi Mass Choir.
What makes jazz different is that you can't predict it, it's all about freedom. Just when you think you know what you're going to hear there'll be a left turn, a jazz musician will change it up.
I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn't have a good issue with their father.
You'd think we'd be exhausted by that rhetoric but you're still able to move people with fear and fright and lies that somebody's going to take your place, that in order for someone to rise, you have to fall.
I'm very grateful for the success of 'Take Me to the Alley.' The chart position it's reached around the world is very exciting, and its success is an example of the acceptance of my music. I am very thankful.