A Quote by Hugh Masekela

I couldn't get away from the gramophone. It was the only thing that I ever really liked, and I was singing along by the time I was five years old - to the Modernaires and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

Hugh Masekela

Quote Topics

Along Away By The Time Ever Five Five Years Frank Get Get Away Holiday King Liked Old Only Really Sinatra Singing The Only Thing Thing Time Years

Quote Author

Hugh Masekela
South African - Musician
April 4, 1939 - January 23, 2018

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.

Cheyenne Jackson

I like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and Dean Martin, who was my favorite, you know.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

Tony Bennett

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

Tori Amos

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.

Gregory Porter

Some of my other heroes around that time were, oddly enough, Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole and people like that - I was always more inclined to listen to ballads.

William Bell

The funny thing is that the studio that we recorded in was the same studio that Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole used to warm up their voices in before they went across the street to CBS Radio. The owner has preserved it exactly the way it was in 1925. It was such a perfect coincidence that we were doing music inspired by that stuff in that room. It was incredible.

Hamilton Leithauser

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.

Gregory Porter

It's not like I'm the first man ever to do this, y'know? You gotta go back to Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. Those are people who've done music well and movies well, and y'know, Frank Sinatra and Elvis and all these dudes have made the transition. I don't know about Elvis, 'bout doin' 'em good, y'know? It's nothin' new.

Ice Cube

Of the great singing stars of the 1940s and '50s, only one - Nat King Cole - died young, at age 45.

Robert Gottlieb

Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.

Bruce Forsyth

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

Harry Connick, Jr.

Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.

Tony Bennett

Mercer was very clever. He knew the way Southerners spoke and put that into his lyrics. But in that whole era, you had the best. Harold Arlen was just fantastic. Cole Porter was better than anybody, and Gershwin was Gershwin, y'know. Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole.

Tony Bennett

I love the music from Nat King Cole, BB King, Albert King... When I think of it, I wouldn't mind being renamed Angus King.