Top 40 Gregory Porter Quotes

I like to absorb the atmosphere and explore wherever I’m working or visiting, so I can’t say there’s any type of place I don’t like. When you travel you have to be open to new experiences.

And I’ve made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.

There were some things in my childhood I thought we’d put to sleep. The idea of one race’s supremacy over another. I thought the issue of colour would be put to sleep by the time I had a son. And that’s maybe why I had a kid so late.

If I can hear the music then no, I don’t hit a wrong note. But if I can’t hear the music because the audience is screaming or the sound system is bad, then I’m subject to stray.

San Diego is where I really started to get my legs, musically.

It’s been some surreal moments, you know from performing at Buckingham Palace to having dinner with Stevie Wonder, it’s been an amazing ride.

My mother gave me the courage to pursue music as a career on her deathbed. She became very ill when I was 21. I didn’t want her to worry about my future. I wanted her to know I’d finish my degree. But she pushed me to follow my dream, even if it wasn’t the safe option.

The songs I write and the way I see the world have been affected a certain amount since I became a father.

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

I think every person who gets a football scholarship thinks the potential for great success in college – and maybe even a career in the NFL – is possible.

I lose my bags all the time. Sometimes for two months. One of the worst times was when I had come from France and I had packed cheese, because I was really crazy about camembert, so I have this really nice suit that stinks of camembert, no matter how many times I dry clean it.

Waving to the Queen after singing Amazing Grace at Buckingham Palace, that was pretty cool.

I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn’t have a good issue with their father.

When there’s an imbalance in terms of what people get to hear, then that’s negative. Then blues, jazz, it will die.

I’m really just a singer that’s trying to make some music that strikes to the heart.

The protest songs of the 1960s and 70s managed to blend political and societal views with music from the heart.

The funny thing about nationalism is that there are two sides to it. Some parts of it are beautiful, but there’s an ugly side as well.

My part of Brooklyn has always been a very warm neighbourhood, even before I had anything going on in the music industry. When I step out of my house to go for coffee on Saturday mornings, I might say hi to 20 people before I get to the cafe. I think they feel they own me, in a way.

The umbrella of jazz is so big and so wide . If you don’t like saxophone, try a vocalist, if you don’t like vocalists, try guitar.

I think sometimes you can be around somebody and take in certain energy and read certain things and you don’t know why your neck is stiff. But if you can recognise the negativity, once you identify it and you know what you are dealing with you can make a point to counteract it with a different energy.

I’m very thankful to San Diego for the musical opportunities it gave me.

My overwhelming memory of my childhood is the constant busyness in the house. I am seventh out of eight kids – five boys and three girls – plus my mom, Ruth.

I had a long-term relationship that failed. I had some health issues. When you dip down emotionally you can gather some things that help you when you do rise. If you go through it and you’re OK, you can develop some scars that help you in the time after.

‘Take Me to the Alley’ is about trying to uplift the lives of people who have been afflicted, maybe the homeless or somebody with an illness, or maybe they’re refugees.

The voice is probably supposed to have some cracks and pops and some mistakes in it.

You’d think we’d be exhausted by that rhetoric but you’re still able to move people with fear and fright and lies that somebody’s going to take your place, that in order for someone to rise, you have to fall.

But sometimes that title ‘jazz’ can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

I’m always lobbying for the irrepressible strength of love.

Gospel music was very prevalent in my house. My mother also loved Nat King Cole. That was some of the first music that I heard. Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole and the Mississippi Mass Choir.

All the events that have made up the character and fabric of British culture and everything that has happened to make up the fabric of America culture – art and music – includes the faces and the colours of a lot of people.

On stage, it’s very naked. There’s a reason you shake your knees. You’re very vulnerable, cos it’s just you, your body is the instrument. But I always had confidence in my voice, if I had the right song, the right words to sing.

I think myself, Jose James, and Robert Glasper are expanding the language – really reminding people that the umbrella of jazz is large and all-encompassing.

What makes jazz different is that you can’t predict it, it’s all about freedom. Just when you think you know what you’re going to hear there’ll be a left turn, a jazz musician will change it up.

Nat King Cole’s lyrics were speaking to me, almost like fatherly advice, when I was listening to him alongside the console stereo player. So that music and that influence comes out of me.

My sisters started to cook at nine and, being one of the youngest, I wanted in on it, too, so I began at six on potato-peeling duty as french fries were my thing.

You could spend your time with your nose buried in a guidebook, but Amsterdam really is best explored on foot, so you can stumble upon the city’s hidden gems. The architecture and the beauty of some of the buildings is also wonderful.

Even if you’ve being playing together for years, there’ll always be something new. You’re constantly back phrasing, front phrasing, singing faster, singing slower.

Being a singer, it’s feast or famine. You have to hit it when it’s hot.

Sometimes I’ll be in circles, and I’ll say I’m a jazz singer, and they have no idea what that means.

I’m very grateful for the success of ‘Take Me to the Alley.’ The chart position it’s reached around the world is very exciting, and its success is an example of the acceptance of my music. I am very thankful.