Who are your musical influences?
Ella Fitzgerald. Sarah Vaughn. Al Jarreau. Betty Carter.
Growing up, I loved Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. As a child, I would come home from school and bury myself in headphones, imitating Streisand for the rest of day. I had a girlfriend I would share Bette with, but not this other music. I was a closet Streisandite for a long time.

The standards have become popular again, but it wasn’t necessarily so when you were growing up.
If you stay backwards long enough, you’ll become trendy (she laughs). I’ve always loved this music even when it wasn’t popular. When I was trying to sell records in the 90s, producers couldn’t understand how they could sell an album full of standards, but these are great songs that stand the test of time. I think Linda Ronstadt was the first to find success (with renewed interest in the standards) and then, of course, Natalie Cole, who gave up a recording contract to do this.

Everybody has a choice. That’s the cool thing about music. And it’s the same with art and food and wine. There is no right and wrong. You just have to do what’s right for you.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you might have done differently?
I’ve been given a musical gift, but maybe not a discipline. I’m sure I could have profited more by continuing my music education in college.

What do you see as the future for the recording industry?
The music industry specializes in the comodification of artists. It brings them up and then kicks them in the ass. Artists like Mariah Carey find huge success and then the industry gleefully gloats at their downfalls. It’s the way the system works. I hope that the few that can recover will bring back their wisdom with them. I hope Mariah Carey returns with a lot more soul, and shows them how it should be done.

Music today is on the Internet. This means that we have a full choice to pick what we want and download what we want. Not having it shoved down our throats is a good thing.