Gregory Porter Quotes

My parents' record collection was the music I was hearing as long as I can remember, and I would play Otis Redding over and over again.

So, when I was eight or nine my mom's friend gave her a big purple bag full of cassettes and I found Seals and Crofts' 'Summer Breeze'... When I found it I stopped going through the bag because I was like, well, I'm not going to find anything better than this. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

One thing that did get me into a lot of different types of music was when I was very young, the local record store went out of business and they were selling off all the vinyl. I remember going in - I was probably 16 or 17 and I'd just gotten a record player as a present. It was like hitting the jackpot: all these records for $3 apiece.

I was 10 years old when I first heard Ginuwine. I remember being at a friend's house, and the music video came on. I was just like, 'What is that?' I was just kind of drawn from there.

I was definitely surrounded by music and fashion at a very, very young age.

As a child, I was this record collector/listener that would sit in a room and listen to the entire Beatles catalog alone, over and over and over again.

When my generation, those early days of television - I know I've been thinking about this lately - my two flashes of me as a little boy. One, I'm standing in front of the radio freaking out that Nat King Cole's singing 'Lady of Spain', just this stuff coming out of the radio, and Guy Williams singing 'Wild Horses' coming out of the radio.

I still love 'The Cure' more than almost any other band. But they were really, truly like the first band that I really loved and felt was mine, you know. At a pivotal time in my life when I was 13, 14 years old.

My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.

I think the first music I ever heard was Abba. I took my mother's cassette recorder and went into the bushes to listen to Abba when I was four or five-years-old.

My first record I ever got was 'Full Moon Fever.' My dad gave me a copy when I was maybe nine years old or something. And I listened to the heck out of that record. I loved that record.

When I was 5 years old, I got my first record. It was 'Flatt & Scruggs' Greatest Hits.' The second was 'The Fabulous Johnny Cash.'

I think the first song I remember hearing was Joni Michell's 'Big Yellow Taxi,' my mom played it for me on the car radio.

I have no idea what was the first record I ever bought, but I think I asked my mom to buy me... um... a collection of Beethoven when I was a little girl because I became very addicted to his music. It might have been piano sonatas.

Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I'd go out riding in the car with mom and dad, and I already knew all the songs off mom's Hank Williams and George Jones records by heart. I remember just sitting in the back seat and singing them at the top of my lungs.

The first record I heard as a kid? My dad is a great soul and blues fan, so he showed me James Brown. That was my first stuff, and I loved it.

I was a kid who was born and raised on Johnny Cash. My father played 'At Folsom Prison' constantly. Cash was the only thing I remember coming from our big, warm stereo console. Even then, I knew Cash was uncool. I knew he was an unhip Republican.

The first album I bought, I didn't even buy it. My grandma got Mike Jones and Bow Wow's 'Wanted' a little later. Matter of fact Ying Yang Twins' 'U.S.A. Still United' was the first album, but Mike Jones was the first album I really love.

I remember, my first time in the studio, I was with my dad, Dark Skies. I was, like, 4 years old. It changed my life. I was like, 'I've found my playground.'

Nat King Cole's lyrics were speaking to me, almost like fatherly advice, when I was listening to him alongside the console stereo player. So that music and that influence comes out of me.

I remember being young in the backseat when my grandma would take me to school, and I would be literally singing and belting out Tina Turner at 3 years old.

My bassist Jorgen Jorgensen opened up my life to a lot of great, obscure old soul records.

I was a huge Lauryn Hill fan; that was all my mom would listen to in the car.

God bless classic rock. It's been very good to me; I'll tell you that.