I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.
I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.
Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.
I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.
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.
In the Bay Area, there was a resurgence of Dixieland jazz in the '40s - there was the Frisco Jazz Band, and Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band.
Early on I was more interested in gypsy jazz music until rock and roll came around and I listened to a lot of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've always wanted to make a whole swing album.
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.
I go back to, like, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Elvis. I listen to everything.
Early '90s, I was big, big into Sinatra. I was in college. I was fascinated.
I quite fancy the 1940s. I like the trams and the trousers.
I was brought up on listening to 78 rpm records from crooners to opera singers to solo piano players.
To sing with Frank Sinatra in any capacity at all is overwhelming.
When I was a kid in the late '60s and early '70s, my parents and their friends would play the records of Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como, music with string arrangements and men singing songs that sounded sad whether they were or not.
We used to play the Savoy Ballroom, and we always had a boogie tune in the set. Bands like Tommy Dorsey used to do a little boogie woogie. The big bands.
My musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.
Rock and roll and swing never quite mixed. Rock and roll came in and just blew everything out of the water. Big bands were dead.
I'm very obsessed with pop culture of the mid-century and it goes hand-in-hand with the music that I studied in school.
Swing is my favorite kind of music.
I love oldies just kind of sweet, slinky, Fifties music. The slow stuff. And Billie Holiday.
I love that period, between the '20s and the '60s. I love doing period pieces, and those eras are my favorite period in time, music wise, and the elegance and the way of being.
There will never be another Frank Sinatra. I never wanted to be another Frank Sinatra. I only wanted to be another Michael Buble.
The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.
Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.
