Gregory Porter says he owes his success to his hometown on Bakersfield.
Gregory Porter
The Jazz sensation returned to his hometown in California to live after residing in New York, and performed there over the weekend at the Doré Theatre, supporting Habitat for Humanity Golden Empire, which families facing poverty.
Gregory - a two-time Grammy winner - said: "My family is here, I have three sisters here and most of the 8 of us are still here.
"New York is great but Bakersfield is home. In my career the things I got from Bakersfield were what I learned from the little small country churches I grew up in, I put that sound and that feeling into my music and that really is what caused my success. "
The 'Liquid Spirit' hitmaker recently released new album 'Nat King Cole & Me', his personal tribute to his idol, late jazz legend Nat King Cole, and he said it was the "emotion" of the songs that drew him to the project.
He explained to BANG Showbiz: "Emotion influenced me, I listened to Nat King Cole from the age of 5 or 6, I knew that this was something beautiful or deeper, these songs are very important to me.
"When it was time for me to step up to the professional microphone I would always consider, what would Nat King Cole do with this song, how would he find the depth and meaning into this song.
"That is how I jumped into this music, I approached it with the beauty that Nat King Cole would approach this music and some of the messages are universal stories."