Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.
There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.
That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.
I'm a Buckeye at heart. I spend more time giving concerts in Ohio than I do in any other state - perhaps more time than I spend performing anywhere else in the world. I have a great relationship with the people of Ohio, and it's great to be near the OSU when I come to Columbus.
My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ...'
More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don't happen in the studio.
It's always been about making music. I've never gotten caught up with the trappings. You can't get caught up in the limousines and the chicks. The most important thing is the music.
Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed.
I don't know how much more what I've done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There've been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.
I had five brothers and sisters. Four of them older, and some of them played instruments, and we would get together and have family recitals and raise money for the church. I belonged to a wonderful church community that encouraged me to sing.
Al and Tommy and I sharing the biggest laugh because it was predicted by everything we did in the first three or four records in my career. It was predicted in the grooves that we would be here sometime later on down the road.
