Chi Chi Rodriguez Quotes

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.

The type of music I like to sing is really those classic songs, those Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, classics.

Some of my other heroes around that time were, oddly enough, Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole and people like that - I was always more inclined to listen to ballads.

I grew up listening to legends such as Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tony Bennett.

I always liked Nat King Cole. I always wanted to go my own way, but I always favoured other singers like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald - I loved Ella Fitzgerald. There are so many of them. Nina Simone was one of my favourites - Johnny Mathis.

When I was a kid in the late '60s and early '70s, my parents and their friends would play the records of Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como, music with string arrangements and men singing songs that sounded sad whether they were or not.

Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.

Early '90s, I was big, big into Sinatra. I was in college. I was fascinated.

The Best of Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Hailey and the Comets, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Frankie Laine all topped the charts in the '50s. Load a playlist of rock n' roll royalty. You're spoilt for choice.

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.

I couldn't get away from the gramophone. It was the only thing that I ever really liked, and I was singing along by the time I was five years old - to the Modernaires and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

I go back to, like, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Elvis. I listen to everything.

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

To sing with Frank Sinatra in any capacity at all is overwhelming.

As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.

All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.

My dad was kind of a pool shark and had a Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin thing going on. I've always been fascinated by the fifties because of him. There was a hip, cool, anything-goes atmosphere back then, but looking good was still a priority.

I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Back in the Rat Pack days, we'd take Frank's plane and sit dead center, because of Nancy. We'd watch the Rat Pack in the center ring and you couldn't ask for a better thing.

Frank Sinatra was a great singer, but my favourite is Sammy Davis Jr. He had incredible versatility in his voice, often doing impressions of people. It's always going to be classic, and you'll never get bored listening.

I've always liked Frank Sinata and Big Band music.

I've always been crazy for the American songbook.

It's not like I'm the first man ever to do this, y'know? You gotta go back to Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. Those are people who've done music well and movies well, and y'know, Frank Sinatra and Elvis and all these dudes have made the transition. I don't know about Elvis, 'bout doin' 'em good, y'know? It's nothin' new.