Savion Glover Quotes

I went in, and there, in the front room, a converted bedroom, sat the first radio I had ever seen. The equipment was so bulky that it took up one entire wall of the bedroom. The set, which could send or receive signals, was tuned to KDKA in Pittsburgh, and I remember being completely flabbergasted at the thought of sounds coming from that box.

My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.

Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?

Swing is my favorite kind of music.

I've always, especially through old Hollywood musicals, loved just to watch tap dancing; I adore it. I think it's fantastic.

As soon as street art got popular, I was just like, 'I'm out of here.'

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

Probably the biggest temptation that young writers face is to be entertaining, to show your bag of tricks and do a bit of tap dancing. I read a lot of things, and I keep seeing this brocade of voice where someone is trying to be too pally with you or ingratiating on the page.

When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

I grew up in Shanghai 'til I was 10 or 11, with one year in Tibet. When I was 5 or 6 years old, the American radio station came to Shanghai, and I used to love bebop and jazz, but I didn't know where it came from.

Fred Astaire is my real idol.

Fred Astaire was my dream dancer.

It's my style, and I'll sink or swim on that style. What you heard on 3AW is what you'll hear on Triple M, and if people don't like it, then it's time for me to become a full-time grandfather.

My role models came in my imagination, from what I'd heard on the radio or on record... Vera Lynn I loved, but I'd only ever heard her on the radio. Gospel singers, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson. So it was in my head that I visualised the emotion but no way to see how people do it.

Everything's so commercialised it shuts down the underground.

I personally knew and worked with Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy hired me to open for him at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas when I was a 19-year-old standup comedian, and that's where my fascination with his incredible story began.

You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.

Instead of the wacky morning show that sounds canned, my team is sitting over there, waiting for me to say something or ask something. And sometimes the reaction is awesome, and sometimes it's terrible. But they're reacting as humans instead of as DJs.

I'm happy that grime remains underground. A lot of people talk like it's some underrated or ignored genre, but to me, that's the beauty of it.

As for what I look for, I don't know any other way to put it, but I look for truth, and honesty, because that's something that's few and far between. And obviously, someone who takes care of herself physically. But truth, honesty, and love, that's what's most important. Oh, and someone who can vibe to some jazz. Because I love jazz music a lot.

There's a whole new generation who know about tap dancing thanks to 'Happy Feet.'

There's a tendency to think tap's had its day, but 'Happy Feet' kept us in the race. That penguin is our Shirley Temple.

I know I idolise someone like Billie Holiday, but I don't look at her and think I have to imitate her lifestyle, to try and sing like she did.

Swing is my main weapon.