I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that. Here I am. I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that. Here I am. I'm touched by Jon Hendricks. I want some of my music to reflect that. And when I write, you're going to hear it.
I think jazz has given me freedom with my voice.
I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.
I wouldn't really call myself a Jazz singer I think it's offending to real Jazz singers to call me a Jazz singer.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
I would love to sing with Ella Fitzgerald.
Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely identified with such familiar ballads as 'Stardust' and 'The Christmas Song' that it's hard to imagine anyone else performing them.
All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.
The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'
I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.
I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.
I always wanted to sing a jazz record.
That's why I loved Dinah Washington. She sung jazz, but they called her the Queen of the Blues. She had the control and sophistication of jazz in her note selection and how to attack a song or certain lines, but then attacked it with a painful force of blues behind it. That's why I admired her so much, because of that versatility.
I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.
I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.
Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.
A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of.
I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.
One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.
Call me the Scatman. I do quite a bit of scattin'.
