Grammy Winning Jazz Vocalist Gregory Porter Breaks His Style & History Down At NOLA Jazz Festival (INTERVIEW)

One of the many activities at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival are the interviews at the Alison Minor Stage. The entertainers and persons of interest are usually the subjects giving the interviews. This year was very abundant with great entertainers being interviewed. One such interview was with jazz vocalist, Gregory Porter who won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2014 for Liquid Spirit and in 2017 for Take Me to the Alley. Here are the highlights from that very informative interview at NOLA.

Most of us love music but we don’t like labels. People want to place you in a genre. How do you feel about your music?

I am a singer and lover of music, but I consider myself a jazz singer that uses all the diaspora of the children of the blues, gospel, soul, and R & B. It’s a family of music. I call them cousins that grew up in the same house. Ultimately, I consider myself a jazz singer. I deviate from the melody kind of like a gospel singer. All the genres are doing the same thing. Somebody at the record store one day decided to separate them.

That makes perfect sense. A number of the songs on your production seem to have a personal tone. Maybe that’s your introjections. How do you pick your music? How do you decide? That seems like a hard thing.

Well, in writing my own music, which is the majority of my music, it sounds personal because it is personal.  She really did break my heart. (Laughing) Something that is positive in a song can come from a negative experience. I could tell you several reasons why I wrote a song like “Painted on a Canvas.” I don’t want to get too political, oh yes I do.

I’m six foot three and two hundred and some odd pounds now. At 12 years old I was already six feet tall. I used music to put people at ease when I was walking behind them in a dark alley or on a lonely street. I would sing, “Waltz for Debby.“    Someone  coming up behind you and intends to bust your head is not going to sing, “In her own sweet world populated by dolls and clowns.” They are not singing that. There is a bit of something to it. I use music to put myself at ease and I put others at ease. “Paint on Canvas “ comes from being looked at and someone deciding whom you are. You are big, you’re black and you’re dangerous. So, singing, “We are like children painted on canvasses, picking up shades as.” I’m saying that because when you are looking at people, you have to look deeper. You have to look at them as a complex painting that took time to do. Don’t say what they are by basing them on what they look like. It’s simple poetry, but the emotion I use to deliver the song is in there. I hope I’m clear.

One of the songs in heavy rotation in my house is “Insanity.” Both the solo version and the version with Lalah Hathaway are played. Your voices meld so perfectly. Who approached who to make the duet? Did you approach her or did she approach you?

This was something having to do with my passive aggressive personality. I just kept putting it out there in interviews, “Oh one of these days, I sure would like to work with Lalah Hathaway. I don’t know if she likes me. I hope she sees this interview.” Eventually, it got to her and we got together. I guess I approached her for about a couple of years. The thing about doing collaborations is that it is based on the time when you are making the record. When that person is available, a whole bunch of things has to line up. She is very busy and I’m very busy the last few years. Yeah, it happened and she is an extraordinary voice coming from the great lineage of Donny Hathaway.

Talk to me about you being a part of the black theatre for a while. Tell me what that experience was like and how it helped to shape you as an artist.

The very first important show that I was doing was “It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues.” It was a theatre piece that talked about American music. One thing was brought from another and how it made this beautiful fabric of American music that came out of the blues. Even, the blues was started from somewhere. Coming back to the field house. Singing, “Oh, Alberta, oh, Lord child, oh Alberta, oh Lord child.” Now, doing that show that was historically accurate, helped me to put some of those sounds, some of those utterances, into my music today.

Fortunately, my mother was from Shreveport. She brought all that soul and all that energy from the little black church that she grew up into California along with agriculture and all the other things. For me, I grew up singing with an eighty-year-old man in a small church who had come from the south who was singing the songs that he learned when he was seven years old. I was getting something, Owe-wee, I didn’t know I was in a master class for gospel music, but I was. They had a style and a sound that was 100-years old that I didn’t know. It was older than a hundred years old. We would pray for two hours. My mother was a minister. Soulfully singing “Yes” repeatedly. Doing that for two hours, somebody would break off and sing, ‘Yes to your will.’ You have the song the way its supposed to be sung and then it breaks off to a solo. Somebody would testify in the middle of that. Then they would go back into the chorus. (Laughing) I forget the question.

You answered it. Let’s talk a little bit about Nat King Cole, what you are working on now. We are talking about a man for people of color. One of the first people of color that we saw on television, very erudite, very stylish, very sophisticated and the way he sang every note, every syllable was enunciated, his diction, one of the great diction singers of all time. Is that part of the reason you chose to do his work?

You talk about how the music I do, how it has personally affected me. Nat’s music was very important to me. First of all it was the music of my mother. I sang a little song when I was six years old, messing around on a tape recorder.  Singing, ‘Once upon a time I had a dreamboat, Once upon a time I had a love,’ I’m sorry I just had a moment. My mother said to me at the time, “Boy, you sound like Nat King Cole.” I didn’t know who Nat King Cole was. The name stuck in my head. Nat? Nat is a bug. What a name. I got a bunch of records. First of all, upon grabbing the records and seeing this elegant man, sitting by a fire, looking like somebody’s daddy, in the absence of my own father, she said, “I looked like somebody.“ My father wasn’t around, I didn’t do nothing like my daddy. He wasn’t around. I put the record on and out came ‘Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again. Nothing’s impossible, I’ve found when my chair’s on the ground, I pick myself up, just myself off, and start all over again.’ Now that is fatherly advice. So is “Smile” if you listen to it closely. So, is “Nature Boy,” ‘the greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return.’ That’s how I learned to listen to the music.

I was also listening to Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and the O’Jays and all that music of the late 70s and early 80s. But Nat was my guy though. I could go to the record player and put Nat on and it was a personal thing between me and Nat. It was so interesting to me and I did it at a young age. I self-medicated with Nat’s music. You have to stop me cause I could go on and on about Nat.

You mentioned that you self medicated. That’s an amazing thought. People automatic go to the negative when you say self-medicated. That is such a positive force. It’s amazing that you are still doing his work. At the same time, you went to Royal Albert Hall and performed in London. You did “Quizas, Quizas, Quizas.” What was it like to perform in that hallowed space doing someone you admired so much?

 Again, my dear mother used to talk about these lofty things. We would be like ‘”Mom you’re just doing it again.” She would say, “Baby, your gift will make room for you at the king’s table, the table of royalty.” We were like, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.’ She always said these grand things. I was like, ‘Mom,.” She said these lofty dreams, she said, “ Son, You will perform for royalty.” The royal box was full that night (that I performed). That’s what I’m trying to say. As I’m singing the music of Nat King Cole that night that she gave to me. You know, you better listen to mama is all I’m saying. When we were kids, we didn’t even know what the Royal Albert Hall was. She said, “You are going to sing at the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall too.”

I want to talk about a few of my favorite songs because they are probably some of yours too. The first I ever heard you and became involved with your music, I said this man is singing about brown grass. He makes it sound so lush and beautiful and wonderful. Then you delve into the lyrics and the underlying meaning of there is nothing but brown grass. How did that concept even come to you?

At the time, I was in Brooklyn and I was considering moving back to my hometown, Bakersfield. It is hot and dry. There are hills of brown grass there. Then thought of when you are in a relationship came to me that the grass is always greener on the other side. In any relationship, there can be some difficulties and mistakes. I was thinking of a conversation I had with a good friend or a brother who can tell you the one’s that holding it down for you, taking care of you, and picking you up when you’re down. That’s the one you need to stick with instead of the one you think is flashy and shiny on the other side. It’s about sticking with the one you should be with.

Are there any artists out there you would like to work within the future? We might as well put it out there. We might as well spread the word.

I’m really blessed when I conjure it and sometimes when it happens. No, (I don’t have anyone in mind presently). If Katy Perry calls, I’ll do something with her. We are so lucky to even love music. To be able to do music and be in an environment and a village that we have created that’s full of music, good food, and soulful people is amazing to me. I just want to be a part of that. I want to be able to say something that is positive. There’s a whole bunch of music that is out there that is doing everything.  My lane is trying to say something that moves people in a better and a positive way and a thoughtful way. I’m hoping that I can continue to do that.

There was a question and answer period from the crowd that lasted for ten minutes. Porter gave a stellar performance in the Jazz Tent stage later in the afternoon.

Photos, transcription and interview organization by Mary Andrews

Interviewed by Karen Celestan