Dianne Reeves Quotes

From the spiritual came the blues, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues. I heard all of that music growing up, and that has influenced how I approached classical music. I'm sure of it.

You have to have a little soul in your singing. The kind of soul that's in the spirituals. That's why I'd like to include spiritual material in the sets I do. It's a part of my life.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

The blues is played everywhere. There's no place I've been where they don't have blues or aren't interested in blues.

I'm all into Jazz; I'm into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I'm a huge southern gospel fan.

I have always loved soul singers.

My favorite singers in the world have been black singers, and you can go to any church and hear the best singers in the world - and I'm a singer, and I love singing!

I do love singing. I wouldn't say I'm any good, but I definitely love it - especially jazz singing.

Blues was made for the recessed.

Richard Julian was the one who told me to check out Cartola. Telling someone to check out Cartola is like telling someone to check out Tony Bennett, you know.

The idea of a musical comedy was something we had had in mind for many years, but the project 'Igudesman & Joo: A Little Nightmare Music' has a history that goes back five years. I can say that this is the most successful project that we have ever done.

I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.

Well, I grew up on the blues, man!

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.

I would love to sing with Ella Fitzgerald.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.

Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith sinking Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand.

Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

Blues is such a dynamic and ever-changing system of music.