Vocal Jazz Quotes

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.

Sarah Vaughan was the Charlie Parker of the vocalists during the 1950s.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

My parents were into The Mills Brothers, Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughn, and all those people sung the most wonderful songs - and even when I got into rock 'n' roll, that stayed with me.

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

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.

I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her - she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she'd just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.

A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of.

But me and my sister knew all the Doris Day and Frank Sinatra songs, too.

Call me the Scatman. I do quite a bit of scattin'.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

The other songs [of Billie Holiday] - "Body and Soul" is like the standard - I also wanted some songs that I knew I would sound good on, as a producer. It's been the same nine songs since I debuted it back in 2012.

Ive got a soft spot for really cheesy 1980s ballads by Pat Benatar and Foreigner. When I'm having my make-up put on at 6am and I need to be warmed up gently, it's always Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone.

The singer who really opened the door for me was Sarah Vaughan. But I listen to so much music, especially when I was growing up. My parents loved jazz music, so on Saturday [laughing] it would be the "Longine's Symphonettes," and on Sunday it was Mahalia Jackson.

I've made my own music, and the way I've always described it is Peggy Lee with an electric guitar, or Billie Holiday with some PJ Harvey in there.

Oh my gosh, I love Jon Hendricks.

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

I have this image in my head of me in the house I grew up in, and hearing this incredible music on the television show, going over to it, and there's Jon Hendricks, Dave Lambert, and Annie Ross. It knocked me out of my socks, and I'm still in flight.

I was a 12 year old kid in Northern Idaho listening to Billie Holiday and Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole. This whole genre of music is a part of who I am.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.