A biography for Gregory Porterhasn’t been written yet.
“San Diego is where I really started to get my legs, musically.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A Change Is Gonna Come' has always been a powerful song for me as it comes from a place of vulnerability.”
“I can be a bit nerdy so I need a good, clearly marked map, as you can miss out on some of the coolest places in Amsterdam if you don't have a wander down the little side streets.”
“My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.”
“I was quite shy as a child. My sisters were the gang leaders, my brothers were the enforcers and I was a tag-a-long.”
“My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.”
“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.”
“A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.”
“The songs I write and the way I see the world have been affected a certain amount since I became a father.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I was 5 years old when I first broke into my mother's records and played Nat King Cole, and sat alongside the stereo and listened to Nat's music.”
“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.”
“As well as having a really strong message, sometimes an artist needs to couple their sentiment with something that's soulful and groovy to listen to.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Sometimes I'll be in circles, and I'll say I'm a jazz singer, and they have no idea what that means.”