My family was very encouraging, and both of my grandparents were both beautiful singers. My grandmother was a coloratura soprano, and my grandfather was an Irish tenor in a barbershop quartet.

A lot of young people want to become jazz singers, but there are not more jam sessions like there used to be. I just want to have the opportunity to be able to bring that to some young people.

I love music; I was never the type of singer to say, "This is my specific genre, or I only sing R&B music." I feel like as a singer, you should be limitless and you shouldn't be stuck in a box.

So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.

The artist had captured a moment that went on suggesting other moments in the mind of the beholder. This, Timmon told me, was what every painter, every singer, every craftsman sought to create.

I always believed a singer should be able to sing any kind of song. If I wanted to sing a Cole Porter song, I should be able to do that. Or Sherry, I should be able to do that. Or a Dylan song.

I feel responsible to make something original as a Japanese artist. There are lots of singers and guitarists, but I feel that on stage its meaningless to copy something someone has done before.

I've worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.

My favorite flamenco singers, they're not trying to look pretty. They're trying to put truth in what they do, in the way they express themselves. Sometimes that's not beauty, but it's beautiful.

Everybody, even me, sometimes had to compromise on something, doing things we know to be wrong, and this happens doing whatever job in the world. But a singer must have the courage of saying no.

The people I admire are Tim Buckley and John Martyn - singers that grew into themselves and were honest. John Martyn is one of the great soul singers because soul is not a genre; it's a feeling.

You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

Punjabi film industry is not yet ready to give change to new actors, but if Punjabi singers, who already have a fan following, enter the industry, it will be a great help to uplift the industry.

I find male singers and what they sing about fascinating. It makes me realize how little we know about ourselves and how little I know about myself. It's interesting to see the male perspective.

I feel responsible to make something original as a Japanese artist. There are lots of singers and guitarists, but I feel that on stage it's meaningless to copy something someone has done before.

Gordon Lightfoot has created some of the most beautiful and lasting music of our time. He is Bob Dylan's favorite singer/songwriter - high praise from the best of us, applauded by the rest of us.

Those who are not trained singers will find that their voice quavers. That should not happen. The quaver should be used only where necessary and not because a singer cannot hold a note or a tune.

What Autotune allows is for people like myself and Kanye West not to depend on the singer. Back in the Fifties, the songwriter was rendered invisible. Now the songwriter is there in the forefront.

I actually prefer female voices to listen to, mostly, but among the male singers whose voices I like are Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, that sort of voice. Contemporary crooners rather than rockers.

I come from probably many generations of singers because my grandmother had a really incredible voice and sang in church. And my mother had a gorgeous voice and was always singing around the house.

Singing doesn't have to mean that you sound like Stevie Wonder. I love to sing. I'm not the greatest singer in the world. But, a lot of my favorite singers aren't the greatest singers in the world.

It was an extraordinary experience to have backup singers like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have never experienced anything quite like it before and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.

I feel like I'm getting better as a writer and as a singer and that there is more to discover there, so hopefully other people feel that way too without having to disassociate with the earlier work.

Your knowledge remains limited if you just listen to your songs but you grow as a singer when you listen to other singers' work - their style, accent and modulation. You end up absorbing new things.

After ten years of struggle I reached somewhere, and then I see some people pulling me down. I tell myself that if this is what singers have to go through, I would never let my kid enter this field.

I grew up in a house that was always happy, and my family was always music, music. I started playing percussion very young, because I had some uncles who were musicians and all my aunts were singers.

I'm from Michigan, but I'm just as country as anyone else. Maybe I don't have the speaking voice of most country singers, but it is what I love. It's how I've always sung, and it's what I grew up on.

I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.

People would ask me, "what do you want to be when you're older?" and I'd be like, "a singer," and they'd be like, "what do you really want to be?" and I'd be like, "oh, I really want to be a singer."

We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.

I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.

I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.

As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott.

I think if you look back at the lead singers that left groups that didn't make it, you'll see that a lot of them were songwriters like Lionel Richie. I mean, they were able to control their own destiny.

The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer - and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent - is Nina Simone. She's my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.

I was a young folk singer, or wanted to be. I really wanted to be a New England folk singer, but they never would accept me. I was always hard to categorize, and people wouldn't know what to make of it.

Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say - Kate Bush and Radiohead - and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.

I usually listen to various kind of singers. Curtis Mayfield was my favorite. James Brown, Tina Turner, queen of soul, I started to get that musical essence from that time before I even do my first song.

Frankie Randall is a consummate performer. He is an exquisite jazz pianist and wonderful singer. I had the great pleasure to work with him on the Dean Martin Show and I'm very proud to call him a friend!

I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They're all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.

I was always a natural performer. It was easy for me. I danced and I sang, and all that stuff. I felt like I'd be something in the arts, but it vacillated between being a dancer and a singer, or whatever.

My parents were both in show business. My father was an actor, my mom an actress, and both singers, dancers and actors. They met in Los Angeles doing a play together and so I grew up in a show biz family.

I'm not a jazz singer, blues singer or country singer. I'm a singer that can sing rhythm & blues, that can sing jazz, that can sing country. There's a big difference. In other words, I'm not a specialist.

I always considered myself being an organizer. I'm very good at teaching singers, I'm very good at staging a show, to entertain people. But I never included myself. I never applied this to me as an artist.

I grew up a huge Roy Orbison fan. He had such a crazy range. And I grew up listening to old jazz, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone. I remember trying to imitate female jazz singers because I had a higher range.

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.

I'm like two different people. The way I sing comes from the music I listened to when I was younger, from black American R&B singers. My speaking voice is something else. It's what my mum and dad taught me.

I feel there are tone singers, and there are more vocal gymnastics singers. And I think that's amazing when people can do that, but I think there's room for the tone singers. And there aren't a lot of them.

I never pursued voice hard enough. I've done musicals here and there, but I was never dedicated to really being one of these fantastic, operatic kind of singers that you have to be in some of these musicals.

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