My mother was born in Guyana on the North Eastern, South American seaboard in 1937. I can only just begin to imagine what that must have been like, but at the very least there was the wireless, and it was on this little invention that my mother first heard Nat King Cole and fell in love with his performance of "Walking My Baby Back Home". On those nights when the wireless was dull or not working her family and other villagers, gathered at the end of a long hot day, would ask her to perform her rendition. She became the local girl, in the village of Lovely Lass, on the west coast of Berbice, who did a lovely rendition of that numberBy the time I was born In Croydon, in the late 1960s, she had a small collection of albums by Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. These were the first records I heard and lovedYears, later, in Guyana, I discovered Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Prince and moved away form my mother's tatse. I only ever admitted, then, to liking what my schoolfriends thought cool. When I came back to London I set about catching up on all the music that I'd missed from '78 to '87, and this pretty much inspired what music I made at the beginning of my recording careerAround the same time though I began to hear the great ladies of the standards and became fascinated as to why my mother never listened to Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday....Never a great fan of my early stuff, she would always remind me of how much I really liked what she played in my childhood and I realised that I'd spent a long time not doing what I really loved best and what came most naturally. It was time to take on some truly great classics. I could finally make a record my mother would enjoyDavid August 2005
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