Maury Yeston Quotes

As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.

For many years, I've always been attached to what they call the Great American Songbook, and Kern was a great leader of that because he had the classical training of Europe. He impressed all the greatest composers, like Cole Porter and Gershwin. They couldn't believe he was writing the songs he was writing.

My grandmother had always played show tunes from classic musicals at the piano when we were growing up, so that helped me fall in love with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, etc.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

Cole Porter wrote Anything Goes and four more hits for me.

Dietz and Schwartz have sort of fallen by the wayside a little bit, and they are up there with Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. They are the finest of the revue composers - their stuff is so good and so strong.

I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.'

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

The Gershwin legacy is extraordinary because George Gershwin died in 1937, but his music is as fresh and vital today as when he originally created it.

I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me.

I've always been crazy for the American songbook.

We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the '30s. Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine,' that's one of my favorites.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

Darling, when you're as old as I am, you cherish the very few musicals that have come your way that you know are great classics. You become their guardian.

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

I'm a fan of Jerome Kern and Gershwin. That's my kind of music.

The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've always wanted to make a whole swing album.

I love oldies just kind of sweet, slinky, Fifties music. The slow stuff. And Billie Holiday.

The extraordinary thing about Irving Berlin is that he's like the American Mozart! It seems as if his songs were always there. How do you put together songs like 'Always' or 'Cheek To Cheek'? Songs of his are, frankly, perfect.

My great hero is Billie Holiday, and I've always wanted to do an album of standards with a piano-led quartet.