Billie Holiday Quotes

I was a 12 year old kid in Northern Idaho listening to Billie Holiday and Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole. This whole genre of music is a part of who I am.

Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.

There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.

It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.

I really pulled from that repertoire that Billie Holiday was singing, and the way she sang it. It's sort of this beautiful, not really midpoint, but a period of her career where she really still had her voice. She had that deep wisdom that we've come to associate her with. To me, that's her at the height of her powers.

Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

Chet Faker's a reference to the late Chet Baker. I'm a big fan of his vocal style; it's quite fragile and soft, and that was a style I wanted to take on.

My idol has been Franco Corelli. But every singer can teach you something.

When I tend to belt, it kind of reminds me of like a more '60s girl doo-wop kind of belting.

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.

My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.

I want to sing like Aretha Franklin. Before her I wanted the technical ability of Ella Fitzgerald.

I probably wouldn't be singing if not for Michael Jackson. When I started singing, I didn't like my tone until my mom put me on to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, so listening to the way they used their instrument helped me get more comfortable with my own.

Growing up and playing guitar with my dad and stuff like really influenced me. It definitely must've had an impact on why Miley wanted to sing and why I wanted to sing and play guitar as well.

Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.

Exene taught me how to bend my notes when I sing. That's her style. And I learned that from her.

I studied and sang lot of jazz when I was growing up. I think that plays a little bit into some of the things I do vocally, notes that I pick in chords.

I owe so much of my musical growth to my exploration and performance of Carnatic music.

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

Growing up, any time I would sit down with my grandfather to learn or talk about Carnatic music, he would bring up G. N. Balasubramaniam. Listening to the recordings he would play me, I was dazzled by GNB's voice and how he was able to execute ideas that I could barely wrap my head around.

There's lots of singers that I love; I don't know if I used any of them as role models. Maybe I would have been a better singer when I started if I had.

I think The Beatles are the lasting influence on me, even more so than Dylan.

My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone.