A Quote by Natalie Cole

I loved when my dad was home. He liked to sit in the living room and watch boxing and baseball on TV. Or he'd be tinkering around or listening to records by his musician buddies - George Shearing, Oscar Peterson and the Jackie Gleason Orchestra.
I used to watch the 'Jackie Gleason Show' and Phil Silvers, those early TV things. And a lot of them were patterned on the silent comedies of the '20s.
There's so many FM hits that I love. Bob Seger, there's two of his songs that I love. I would probably love more, but I don't sit around listening to Bob Seger records. It's the same thing with Tom Petty; he writes amazing hits, but it's not often that I sit around at home listening to a whole Tom Petty album.
When my friends were listening to hip-hop or R&B, I was in the crib listening to Billy Joel and Michael Bolton, Luther Vandross, and Oscar Peterson.
Oscar Peterson is my favorite all-around pianist. There are pianists I like because of one thing and pianists I like because of another. But overall, I like Oscar Peterson best.
I loved George Carlin... I used to sit in front of the TV and watch the HBO comedy specials. I loved those comedy specials.
I liked Jackie Robinson because he was cool to watch, not because he was black. Every time you turned around, he was hitting a triple or making a great play in the field or, best of all, stealing home.
I was even more of a fan of Jake The Snake than I was of my dad when I was a kid, and that's because of the snake. Jake used to have his snake, Damien, out in the locker room slithering around the showers. In the locker room, they would actually block off one of the showers just so Damien could roll around, and I'd sit there and watch him.
I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.
My dad and I, we used to play baseball. I was the catcher. Which I liked. Until one day, I saw this game on TV, and I said, Hang on, how come their catcher doesn't have his hands tied to his ankles?
From when I was born, my dad would dance with me in his arms, and I would watch my siblings dancing around in the living room. I just grew up with that. That was just my life.
I think it's just as viable a way of telling a story as anything else but for right now we like playing around with the new ways to do 3-D because I think it's only going to get better. I think that eventually we'll come home, we'll sit in our living room and there will be a little hologram that'll pop up and you'll watch these 3-D movies but you'll be able to walk around it.
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.
My dream as a child was to play with a bass player like Ray Brown, who played with the Oscar Peterson Trio. The feeling I had listening to his work was almost carnal, so to actually play for him was earth-shattering for me.
Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today.
In terms of comedians, I loved, growing up, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett, all those people.
One of the things I always believed in was my dad came to America and he was a very talented musician, but he couldn't make a living that way so he had to support his family as an auto mechanic which he also loved doing. He was also such a great dad because when I first told him I thought I wanted to go into show business, his response was okay, that's interesting.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!