Billy Eckstine
Billy Eckstine
William Clarence Eckstine was an American jazz and pop singer, and a bandleader of the swing era. He was noted for his rich, resonant, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. Eckstine's recording of "I Apologize"was awarded the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone and "full-throated, sugary approach to popular songs inspired singers like Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock and Lou Rawls."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth8 July 1914
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.
My view is that you cannot close your mind and say I don't want to listen to this or that. Because if you can't appreciate the bad for being bad, you can't appreciate the good. If you turn a deaf ear to everything but one style, pretty soon it's not going to work out.
I have one son who's a drummer and then one son writes scripts and another daughter is a model, so they're all doing their thing.
L.A. is kind of laid back, but New York, everybody is out there for that buck, you know.
I never had those hang-ups. I mean, I think the people that were concerned, maybe your agents and things had those things, but I never knew.
I started mainly learning piano, but not as an accomplished pianist. I learned by just using it as a basis for harmonic structures.
Monk was great jazz artist, but geniuses have a little extra something. There's that little something that you know is a little different.
That diatonic scale gives up pretty songs over and over and over and over again, and it's up to you to enjoy it, and I do. I enjoy the business.
You can't sing about love unless you know about it.
I'm not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don't last.
I just went to Harvard a little while, because I graduated from Armstrong High School in Washington and then I went up there but I didn't stay that long because I went into show business.
I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors.
I was so enamored with the idea of being in show business so everything was bright to me. I mean, I didn't think of it as being tough and things like that.
I'm a firm believer and I think my religion is inside.