Gregory Porter fans will get another treat tonight at 10.35pm on BBC1.
The velvet-voiced star will perform live to promote his latest album, Nat King Cole & Me. He will be joined at the piano by Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum.
Here are 10 facts about the singer whose star continues to rise.
1. Porter was born in Los Angeles in November 1971 and raised in Bakersfield, California. Raised by a single mother with seven other children, he admits he was “a mama’s boy”.
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Gregory Porter on the Graham Norton show
People recognise me by it now. It is what it is
2. He is rarely seen without his flat cap, which has been modified with what looks like a balaclava, but without the sinister face covering. He has referred to it as both a security blanket and his “jazz hat”. In a 2012 interview with Jazzweekley.com he explained why he started wearing it: “I’ve had some surgery on my skin, so this has been my look for a little while and will continue to be for awhile longer.
“People recognise me by it now. It is what it is.”
3. Porter cites Nat King Cole as his biggest inspiration, and the chocolate-voiced, Unforgettable singer ignited his love of music as a boy.
“I became obsessed with Nat King Cole,” he told the Scotsman in April. “I was using his music and his style, and even the images from his records, to satiate me in some way, in some absence that I had, in terms of a father figure.”
He even penned a musical, Nat King Cole And Me – A Musical Healing, in 2004 in which he played a character, based on himself, who finds in Cole the love and guidance he seeks.
TOP 20 best selling singles of all time
Mon, October 6, 2014
According to Guinness World Records, the holiday perennial “White Christmas” (1942) by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single worldwide, with estimated sales of over 50 million copies. The song recognized as “the best-selling single of all time” was released before the pop/rock singles-chart era and “was listed as the world’s best-selling single in the first-ever Guinness Book of Records (published in 1955) and—remarkably—still retains the title more than 50 years later.” Guinness World Records states that double A-side charity single “Candle in the Wind 1997″/”Something About the Way You Look Tonight” (1997) by Elton John, a tribute to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is “the biggest-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s, having accumulated worldwide sales of 33 million copies,” making it the second-best-selling single of all time
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Bing Crosby “White Christmas” 1942. Over 50 Million singles sold
4. His “hybrid” of jazz, blues, gospel and soul comes from his roots in Bakersfield. While it’s an epicentre of country music, its mostly migrated population – from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi –also brought with it gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and soul.
“I was singing that music of a bygone era with these old church members that my mother would associate with,” says Porter. “And that still informs my music. Liquid Spirit is directly from that.”
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Gregory Porter in his ubiquitous hat
“I’m fully aware that everything I do doesn’t adequately please jazz traditionalists,” he adds. “I’m trying to come honestly, really trying to be unpretentious. I’m trying to be appealing, even as a jazz artist, to the non-jazz head. Trying to speak to them as well. I want to speak to the human heart.”
5. He released his debut album, Water, in 2010 via Motéma Music, and it was nominated for Best Jazz Vocal album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards. His second album, Be Good, was released on Valentine’s Day 2012 – the title track was also nominated for Best Traditional R&B Performance at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.
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In the recording studio
6. He finally won a Grammy in 2014, with third album Liquid Spirit (Blue Note Records) taking the gong for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
7. Porter was one of the original Broadway cast of It Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues, a musical revue tracing the history of blues music, which opened in New York in 1999.
8. His latest single, The ‘In’ Crowd, was written by Billy Page in 1964 and originally performed by Dobie Gray. Since then it has been covered many times by artists including Bryan Ferry and The Mamas & The Papas.
9. The song Musical Genocide, also on Liquid Spirit, laments the “death of blues, of soul”. He explains: “If you manufacture everything; if you shy away from the organic artist who’s gone through something in his life to try figure out music; if you’re only going for the sexiest, newest thing… Well, that’ll be the death of blues, of soul… So that’s what I mean.”
10. Luckily for his wife and their young son, with whom he lives in Brooklyn, Porter is a very generous man.
“I love cooking, and I love having friends over. I think of music in the same way I think about food, in the serving aspect – you put a plate of food in front of a friend and it feels good, they’re nourished,” he says.
“I think about music like that. And the things that I’m good at are these nourishing things – music, food…. I used to be into massage. Giving, not receiving. And then some other things that you don’t need to know about!”
Gregory Porter’s new album Nat King Cole & Me is out on October 26