Diana Ross Quotes

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

I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.

My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.

Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever.

Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.

The most common misconception about me is that I'm basically a jazz singer.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I really like Billie Holiday's husky voice, and I'd definitely like to find out more about her.

I didn't know what the hell Charlie Parker was playing... I just liked the way he played.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.

One of the things that I love about Sarah Vaughan is that she was always very current.

Dianne Reeves, a famous jazz singer, would be my biggest influence.

When I heard Billie Holiday's voice, Nina Simone's and Ella Fitzgerald's - there was something about their voices to me that was such a different texture than what I was used to listening to at the time. Hearing those jazz voices were so different, and I think I just gravitated toward it.

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

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

The first time I heard Johnny play at the Fillmore East, I wasn't really impressed. He had come on the scene with everybody telling me how great he was, and I didn't hear it.

Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach.

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

When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

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 musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.