A Quote by Natalie Prass

Growing up, I had a natural love for women like Diana Ross, Mary Wells, Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got into Dionne Warwick, Nina Simone, and Patsy Cline. — © Natalie Prass
Growing up, I had a natural love for women like Diana Ross, Mary Wells, Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got into Dionne Warwick, Nina Simone, and Patsy Cline.
I've always sung. I was really into musical theater when I was growing up. As a kid, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, actually, on cassette tapes.
I always liked Nat King Cole. I always wanted to go my own way, but I always favoured other singers like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald - I loved Ella Fitzgerald. There are so many of them. Nina Simone was one of my favourites - Johnny Mathis.
Ive got a soft spot for really cheesy 1980s ballads by Pat Benatar and Foreigner. When I'm having my make-up put on at 6am and I need to be warmed up gently, it's always Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone.
I've always been attracted to music, and women like Aretha Franklin, Beyonce, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Tina Turner showed the path, in a way. They're all tough women but not afraid to be vulnerable. They made me feel someone like me could do that.
Patsy Cline belongs shoulder-to-shoulder with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
I definitely grew up to Nina Simone and a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. And I loved Amy Winehouse. I loved that sort of soulful singer.
Interestingly enough Miles Davis was an influence, and the way he approached harmonics. And one of my biggest influences was Dionne Warwick, early Dionne Warwick.
My dad was into jazz, so there was a lot of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington playing in the house, but also a lot of soul, such as Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald, while my mum liked Prince and Diana Ross.
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.
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.
When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.
As I became an adult, I listened to a lot of jazz, to the ladies of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae and Nina Simone. I loved that they each covered the same songs and interpreted them totally differently. I thought that was so cool. They could each paint their own picture of that moment.
My biggest role models are not chefs, but women like Coco Chanel, Simone de Beauvoir, Nina Simone.
I would love to do a biopic of a famous singer, like Diana Ross or Donna Summer, or an old jazz story that we haven't seen before. I would love to do that! I would love to play Diana Ross 'cause she's an icon. I'm salivating to do that.
The first songs I learned was 'Crazy' by Patsy Cline and 'At Last' by Etta James. I had been growing up with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, great bands.
When I was growing up, my dad would always be playing Motown around the house. He loved Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and got me into Dionne Warwick. It was the best music I'd ever heard. It was just that extremely deep, human, thought-out stream of ideas. You can always hear something new when you listen to that music.
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