Gregory Porter Quotes

Gregory Porter

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 4, 1971

My overwhelming memory of my childhood is the constant busyness in the house. I am seventh out of eight kids - five boys and three girls - plus my mom, Ruth.

Gregory Porter

My sisters started to cook at nine and, being one of the youngest, I wanted in on it, too, so I began at six on potato-peeling duty as french fries were my thing.

Gregory Porter

My mother gave me the courage to pursue music as a career on her deathbed. She became very ill when I was 21. I didn't want her to worry about my future. I wanted her to know I'd finish my degree. But she pushed me to follow my dream, even if it wasn't the safe option.

Gregory Porter

I lose my bags all the time. Sometimes for two months. One of the worst times was when I had come from France and I had packed cheese, because I was really crazy about camembert, so I have this really nice suit that stinks of camembert, no matter how many times I dry clean it.

Gregory Porter

Music that speaks of politics is less listened to than the music of partying, but it's still there.

Gregory Porter

There were some things in my childhood I thought we'd put to sleep. The idea of one race's supremacy over another. I thought the issue of colour would be put to sleep by the time I had a son. And that's maybe why I had a kid so late.

Gregory Porter

You'd think we'd be exhausted by that rhetoric but you're still able to move people with fear and fright and lies that somebody's going to take your place, that in order for someone to rise, you have to fall.

Gregory Porter

I think every person who gets a football scholarship thinks the potential for great success in college - and maybe even a career in the NFL - is possible.

Gregory Porter

I'm very thankful to San Diego for the musical opportunities it gave me.

Gregory Porter

San Diego is where I really started to get my legs, musically.

Gregory Porter

'Take Me to the Alley' is about trying to uplift the lives of people who have been afflicted, maybe the homeless or somebody with an illness, or maybe they're refugees.

Gregory Porter

My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.

Gregory Porter

I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn't have a good issue with their father.

Gregory Porter

I can sing the blues and I have sung the blues. I feel it internally when I'm singing.

Gregory Porter

I had a long-term relationship that failed. I had some health issues. When you dip down emotionally you can gather some things that help you when you do rise. If you go through it and you're OK, you can develop some scars that help you in the time after.

Gregory Porter

A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.

Gregory Porter

I heard Smokey Robinson was singing one of my songs on the radio the other day. Being in the presence of Mavis Staples, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott - Stevie Wonder joined me on stage recently. That blows me away.

Gregory Porter

I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.

Gregory Porter

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

Gregory Porter

My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.

Gregory Porter