A Quote by Gregory Porter

One critic called me nothing but a blues singer, as though that was a slight. That is the highest compliment there is. — © Gregory Porter
One critic called me nothing but a blues singer, as though that was a slight. That is the highest compliment there is.
I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.
You've heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that's because there's been so many can do it better'n I can, play the blues better'n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.
Nowadays blues in particular has a wide, wide, wide, wide net of everything that's called blues. I think if somebody's coming to it in the last ten years or whatever, or even fifteen years, what their experience is what is called blues is different from mine. I have to expand my range of what's been called the blues. I think somebody who's new to it would have to go back and to see what is called blues now, where it came from. If that makes sense.
I don't feel like God called me to be a Gospel singer. He didn't call me to be a Christian singer, he called me to be a country singer, and I just happen to be a Christian.
I don't feel like God called me to be a gospel singer. He didn't call me to be a Christian singer; he called me to be a country singer, and I just happen to be a Christian.
I'm not a jazz singer, blues singer or country singer. I'm a singer that can sing rhythm & blues, that can sing jazz, that can sing country. There's a big difference. In other words, I'm not a specialist.
The biggest compliment I get is that I don't sound like anybody else. I think I value that as the highest compliment.
I grew up listening to Patsy Cline. I was a huge Patsy Cline fan. I still am. Even though she's considered country, I think of her more as a blues singer. She's got a great blues voice, and she has such an amazing story, which I always loved.
There are happy blues, sad blues, lonesome blues, red-hot blues, mad blues, and loving blues. Blues is a testimony to the fullness of life.
Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, 'Book Of Hours,' there is this blues sensibility. There are moments of humor even in the sorrow, and I'm really interested in the way that the blues have that tragic-comic view of life - what Langston Hughes called 'laughing to keep from crying.'
I had the one thing you need to be a blues singer, I was born with the blues.
It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now.
I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.
James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.
'You're beautiful' was the compliment I craved so much. I didn't care if people called me smart or innovative - it was the number-one compliment I gave out to other women hoping it was given back to me. I heard people saying it to my best friends. It was the one I wanted to hear more than anything else.
I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story.
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