Chuck Brown Quotes

I always loved the guitar, from when I was quite little. My dad had a G banjo at the house that he played. When he had parties, my sisters always played piano, and my dad played banjo.

I had aunts who played piano and sang and also were entertainers, so music was very much a part of my life.

My mom played 12-string and sang, and my dad could play pretty much any wind instrument and had a great ear for harmony. Soon enough, my sister and I got into music because we were always around it, and people were always listening to it.

I started singing when I was five. I grew up the youngest of four kids who all studied classical piano, so you could say I've been listening to music ever since the moment of conception.

My parents didn't have records, they didn't have radios, and they didn't listen to music. My grandmother was my main connection to art and music. She could play piano very well, and she had perfect pitch.

The music that I chose during my life, it wasn't arbitrary. It was all in my family home when I was growing up. I never tried to record anything I hadn't heard before the age of 10. Otherwise, I couldn't do it authentically.

I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.

I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.

My father's nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that's how I decided I wanted to get into music.

I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing.

My dad was a professional musician; my mom played, too, but just for fun. All my siblings played. The house was full of music books, videos, albums. I guess it's not surprising that I ended up becoming a musician.

Music's always been in my home. My dad plays guitar, and I grew up listening to cumbia and salsa and boleros.

I've been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I've seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.

I grew up listening to so many different things, and having a dad that also sang, music was innately born into me. Going through high school and college, I'd go see anyone who came to town, it didn't matter the genre.

My brother was a drummer, and he was always, like, smashing the kit around when I was a kid, and my dad was, like, one of them old musicians, and he played in, like, loads of different bands in the '70s and '80s. Him and my brother were kind of like my main inspirations.

I was raised with a lot of music around me at all times.

I grew up always around music through my father - I would play in music studios with him as I was growing up - and my high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts.

I was conscious of vocalists from an early age.

I come from a home that had a lot of music played in general.

My dad played music so I was around it at a really young age.

I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you've got to know how great he was.

My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.

Well, my sister played trumpet. Can you imagine having a sister blowing the trumpet around the house, Fred? And my brother, he played piano. Everybody was playing some kind of music, so it was natural for me to get into it.

The first thing I learned was the 'St Louis Blues' when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.

I grew up seeing my parents perform and sing, and I just always wanted to be singing, too. Music has always been my deepest passion and what I felt most connected to.