A Quote by Jose James

I actually started the whole project some years ago with a live debut at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The focus was mainly on my favorite period of Billie Holiday, which was the late-50s Verve recordings, with essentially a small version of the Count Basie band.

Jose James

Quote Topics

Actually Band Brussels Count Debut Essentially Favorite Focus Holiday Late Live Mainly My Favorite Period Project Recordings Small Some Started Version Which Whole Years Years Ago

Quote Author

Jose James
American - Musician
Born: January 20, 1978

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

Jose James

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, 'Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.'

Count Basie

When I first studied Billie Holiday's life story years ago, I admit that I was quite judgmental.

Rebecca Ferguson

The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'

Diana Ross

My father was a part of that generation, and my mother, too - the late-'30s, early-'40s big-band generation. Frank Sinatra, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday - all that stuff was in my background.

Donovan

When I was 16 or 17 I heard the Count Basie band with Jo Jones and Lester Young and Herschel Evans and I couldn't believe it. They were the greatest swing band. I really fell in love with that sound. Everybody danced!

Illinois Jacquet

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

Billie Holiday

I feel like, in many ways, Billie Holiday's still very under-appreciated as an artist. People focus on her voice, and all of the very recognizable vocal things that she does, which are great. But I wanted to, with this project, start the conversation again about her as a radical feminist, as a civil rights activist - taking a stance. And also just [her] being a non-conformist.

Jose James

I think my first musical memory is actually listening to Billie Holiday. I think I must have been, like, 3 or 4 years old.

Jose James

I actually started making tank tops under the name Kitty Moon many, many years ago, but I just didn't have the time to fully devote to it. Now that we don't go on the road as much, I have a better ability to focus on a line; that's why I started Total Skull.

Sheri Moon Zombie

I was a producer and rapper before Linkin Park. Once the band took off, it was the center of my focus. A couple of years ago, I started missing doing straight-up hip hop, and that's when Fort Minor began.

Mike Shinoda

As you get to the end of the project you want to run all the tests cases against one version and make sure that you know that that version passed everything. And so as you get late in the project you get a little more conservative about making radical changes to the software.

Bill Gates

Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band. He's a way of life.

Lena Horne

My dad spent most of the '50s and early '60s actually acting as sort of an advance man for the Justice Department, as a civil rights lawyer. So it was actually reading his papers after he passed away a few years ago that first started me thinking about this... What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man?

Bill Foster

I was reading an article with Stevie Ray Vaughan a long time ago, and the number '1959' stuck out to me for some reason. So I started searching those out as the band got more popular and I could actually afford one. And I found this one in Los Angeles. That's what introduced me to the whole world of 1959s.