A Quote by Ella Henderson

I guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music.
My grandfather was a massive influence in my music. Growing up, he would play a lot of old-school records to me. A lot of jazz and swing music, actually, growing up.
I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.
I was into jazz even when I was a kid. My parents would play Ella Fitzgerald, George Shearing, and Dixieland music. I loved The Monkees, The Beatles, The Eagles, and America.
I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'
Rat Records in Camberwell is where most of my record collection has come from. It's like someone with my exact taste in music has handed them all their old vinyl.
My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.
When I heard Billie Holiday's voice, Nina Simone's and Ella Fitzgerald's - there was something about their voices to me that was such a different texture than what I was used to listening to at the time. Hearing those jazz voices were so different, and I think I just gravitated toward it.
I have always loved creating and entertaining. It started with music, singing. I grew up in a household filled with music - not pop but old-school stuff, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.
We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.
It's bluesy, rocky jazz. I call it soul music, but it's not James Brown soul music. It comes from my soul. It comes from a deeper place. Duffy has that similar old school soul sound to herself. If I opened for Duffy, that would make sense to me, in my head.
I like the old school heavy metal bands like AC/DC and Aeromith. I like that type of music. As the director, I tried to influence the type of music the bands in the movie would play.
My mom played me all kinds of music, from Ella Fitzgerald to Celine Dion. I listened to everything growing up, old and new.
I've looked at pictures that my mom has of me, from when I was four years old at the turntable. I'm there, reaching up to play the records. I feel like I was bred to do what I do. I've been into music, and listening to music and critiquing it, my whole life.
My dad had records, but only one deck, so Skep used to try and play a song on one deck - the Music Centre we used to call it, a cabinet with a glass door - he would play one tune on the record and then mix the tape to it, that's what he used to like doing. He became a DJ.
I want people to feel what it was like in the '40s. That's when popular music in the United States was so beautiful. Frank Sinatra, the Pied Pipers, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday. That's when popular music had deeper values, to me. This was music that was selling millions of records.
I didn't really grow up on hip-hop. Ella Fitzgerald and the old school jazz divas are more my comfort zone.
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