My Conversation with Jazz Singer Gregory Porter
Here’s another interview from the archive of the podcast I created in Japan around 10 years ago called The American Radio Show, on which I tried to tap into some of the cultural wealth that passes through Japan, mostly invisibly because the Japanese media is pretty much monolingual.
I interviewed astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, movie producer and director Roger Corman, actor and political activist George Takei, composer Philip Glass, jazz musicians Gregory Porter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin; Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, and a bunch of others.
I started out thinking I would interview only visiting Americans, and I got funding from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo to support the project, but then I had opportunities to speak with people like Naoko Yamazaki, and I expanded my brief to “people with a connection to the U.S.A.”; Naoko had, of course, trained with NASA in Houston for years, and she knew what a Hostess Twinkie was. Fumihiko Maki had studied at Harvard, and worked at Washington University in St. Louis (but I’m not sure he knows what a Twinkie is).
Today’s post is an interview with jazz singer Gregory Porter, whose music (and voice!) I love. His story is unusual (he “made it” at almost 40), and I hope you find it interesting. Subscribing is free, so please feel free to forward to anyone you think may also be interested. Thanks for reading!
Jazz singer Gregory Porter released his debut album, Water, in 2010, at the ripe old age of 38, and was rewarded with a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. His follow-up album, Be Good, released in 2012, earned another Grammy nomination, for Best Traditional R&B Performance.
Porter is somewhat unusual as a contemporary jazz singer in that he writes his own songs, and he’s even more unusual in that he has managed to “make it” on his own, relatively late in life. He persuaded independent record label Motéma Music to release his first two albums, which received those Grammy nominations, then moved to Blue Note Records, whose president, Don Was, said, “The first thing that struck me was the writing, the depth of his poetry.”
I spoke with Gregory at the Blue Note in Tokyo while he was touring Japan.
Q. As background, you grew up in California, right, and came to music through your church, where your mother was a minister?
GP. That’s right. My mother was a minister, and I was ... her choir. A choir of one. My mother visited the people who needed help the most. That was the drug dealers, the drug users, the alcoholics ... so we went to the places where those people were. On Skid Row. In Bakersfield, California, which was very, very southern. Many of the black churchgoers were from Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi ... the south. And that was formative for my singing. I grew up singing gospel blues. But my other influences were records we listened to at home, and Soul Train. And the rule was the eight of us kids – five brothers and three sisters – had to clean the house before we watched Soul Train, so in my mind, some of the music of that time is associated with the smell of cleaning products!
Q. So then you went off to San Diego to university?
GP. I went to San Diego State on a football scholarship, but I injured my shoulder and wasn’t able to play anymore, which meant that I had more time, to go to jam sessions and jazz clubs. I had always been into jazz, in addition to my gospel singing, and I started meeting people, and singing gigs, and before I knew it, I had been drawn more deeply into the music world, by the people I met who were music scholars, and who had knowledge to offer about music, and musical history. But jazz was never a serious thing for me until that time, when people who heard me said, “You’ve got something there. You’ve got to cultivate that.” Then, at a jam session, someone heard me and gave me my own gig. I remember singing “Stormy Monday” and “Nature Boy”. Things like that. A lot of the guys at the jam sessions were playing bebop, so I learned a few songs that would fit in with what they were playing. Stuff by Jon Hendricks, Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure. But I think I benefited from not knowing the rules of “how to be a jazz singer.” I didn’t know that you’re supposed to know this set of songs, and I didn’t know you’re not supposed to want to write all your own songs.
Q. You got your break, really, through musical theater, right? You spent a year or two as one of the principals in a musical called “It Ain’t Nuthin’ But the Blues”, which ended up on Broadway? But that ended in 2000. And you put out your first album in 2010. So what happened between 2000 and 2010?
GP. Quite a bit of musical theater. And you said I got my break in theater, but as wonderful as musical theater is, and as important to me as it is, in a way it was keeping me away from focusing solely on a music career. Theater would just give me a good enough paycheck to keep me from focusing solely on the music. Around 2004-2005 I wrote my own musical, “Nat King Cole and Me”, and I had enough success with that, I was able to take time to cultivate the music. Got the band together, and in a tiny club in Harlem, I invited the head of Motéma Records to hear us, and she said, “We should record that!”, but it was slow to happen. It’s tough to get people to give you money, and take a chance on something that’s an unknown. But with that first album, and the Grammy nomination, that got the ball rolling.
Q. You read so much about the end of music, and the end of the independent artist, the small artist. For the little guy, how do you break into the business?
GP. I love this so much, that whether or not it brings me success, or I’m on the edges of poverty, this is what I’m going to be doing. I don’t desire to have nothing, but this is what I love and what makes me feel good. And I would say that when I had nothing. I’m not bathing in gold now, but ... you have to have somewhat of an all or nothing attitude in you. It’s such a long shot. My father, when he was on his death bed, and I told him I wanted to be a singer, he said, “There’s a lot of good singers out there.” But it was something that I loved, and I would say to someone starting down that road, to save that energy and those feelings that you have, and apply them to your art. Apply your desire to get the music out when you’re making the music.
Q. What’s your composing process?
GP. Well, the songs are mine, the lyric, and I give Chip, my pianist, the songs, and I can’t tell him what to play. His sound is just an unbottled sound. I will give him the starting point, and he will do what he wants. For the lyrics, the process for me starts with the idea. Taking “Be Good” as an example, a phrase will come to me, and that will keep going around in my head again and again until it becomes a full song, with the melody. In that song, I write about lions, as a metaphor for the vulnerability of men. I was riding my bike home after getting dumped by a girlfriend, and I felt like a man, but I felt like an injured man. In general, though, I take my experiences, and I translate them into my music. Inspiration can come from anything, positive or negative.
Q. We talked about Nat King Cole. What musicians have particularly inspired you, and what musicians would you particularly like to collaborate with, if you had the chance?
GP. You know, I would love to do a duet album with Herbie Hancock. He’s so talented, I just wonder where he would take my voice. It wouldn’t even have to be recorded, just for me. Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye. Those are two voices that are not particularly jazz, but stylistically, they stretch, and they bend, and they play with time, and they sang jazz. Donny Hathaway’s voice was just extraordinary, and he could sing anything, really. But on top of that, I have been inspired by many of the voices I’ve heard singing gospel blues, people who have never been recorded. I could list all the people who have been influences: Andy Bey, Leon Thomas, Joe Williams, Etta Jones ... but their voices have to be synthesized, and come out of me, as Gregory Porter. So what does Donny Hathaway have to do with Joe Williams? Only their gospel roots, but they find communion in me, and it comes out as Gregory Porter.
Q. You’re here in Japan promoting Liquid Spirit, and I guess that’s part of a global promotion tour. Are you working at the same time on your next album?
GP. Yes, although I’m never consciously doing that until it’s time to record. But I write all the time. I write when I’m in movement – on a train, in a plane. So that’s constantly happening. I’m attracted by a moving picture. Something that I will go past, and that will spark something, and then the picture is long gone, but it’s still in my mind. And will those pictures be part of the next project, or two projects from now? I don’t know, but I’m always working on it. There’s no pressure from the record label to put out a certain number of albums in a certain time, but I kind of like that. I feel like once I’ve written the song, I want people to hear it. But there’s a lot of work that goes in to making and promoting an album, so it takes time.
Q. Last question. You’re famous for your hat, and I was listening to Goodbye Pork Pie Hat on the way over here. What do you think the song will be called that commemorates you? What will they call your hat?
GP. That’s a good question! What will they call it? There are a lot of famous hats in jazz. Lester Young, Jon Hendricks ... and I’ve been photographed now so much wearing this hat, I think it’s probably my thing. I’ve got to work on figuring out a name for it!