I spent many a summer early morning with the radio very low, half sleeping and half listening.

I'm not doing contemporary songs unless something comes along that really knocks my socks off.

You can take the guy out of the neighorhood but you can't take the neighborhood out of the guy.

Jazz was my first love.

I spent many a summer early morning with the radio very low, half sleeping and half listening.

At school, I'd sing in groups in the locker room or in the bathroom, which was like an echo chamber. The problem is I didn't know how to get started singing professionally. The pool hall was my Facebook. I'd hang out there to keep up with what was going on and to let people know where I could be reached if singing jobs came up.

Becoming successful is a relentless pursuit. It's good that it's that way: When it does come, you learn to know how to appreciate it, and know how lucky you are to be doing something that you love so much.

Establishing a style is important, it really is, but a lot of singers get so involved with their instrument, and more so than they do in what they're singing. I think you really have to think about what you're singing. You have to make the public believe what you're singing. And in order to do that, you have to believe it.

I always believed a singer should be able to sing any kind of song. If I wanted to sing a Cole Porter song, I should be able to do that. Or 'Sherry,' I should be able to do that. Or a Dylan song.

I do belong to Jersey. There's no doubt about that in my mind. They have been so loyal and so good to me; how could I possibly belong any place else?

I don't play golf or tennis, I don't ski, I don't snowboard. If you love what you do, you never get enough of it.

I grew up beyond proud - we didn't have much, but we had a lot of love.

I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance - you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life.

I thought everybody had falsetto. And since I wasn't a schooled singer who studied with anybody, I just thought anybody who had a voice could do anything they wanted with their voice.

I went to school to learn to be a hairdresser. I worked at a wholesale florist, where I delivered to florists all over New Jersey. I'd come home and go out to work down at the Shore. The early jobs, I remember, were $5, $6 a night. And I lived in the projects right until the time I became successful.

I'd seen so many people become stagnant in New Jersey - I had this fear I'd just stay there. They'd come out of high school, get a job, get married, have kids and die in Jersey. I wanted more.

If I close my eyes, I can remember the first apartment where I lived with my family in Newark, N.J., in the late 1930s. The rooms were lined up like train cars - you had to go through one to get to another - and there wasn't any heat or hot water.

In 1967, I found out I was losing my hearing. I went 10 years without any help. I had otosclerosis - hardening of the bone in the middle of the ear.

It was very important to establish a sound, so that people heard a record on the radio and knew immediately that it was you.

It's unconditional love with your kids.

My name actually is Francesco Castaluccio.

One day, when I was still living at home, a friend told 'Texas' Jean Valli about me. She was originally from Syracuse, N.Y., and lived in New Jersey but sang country. One night, she had me come up on stage where she was performing. I sang 'My Mother's Eyes,' and she was knocked out.

People don't get married to get divorced. Maybe people weren't meant to be together forever.

Starting in my teens, I was always standing on the corner near our apartment singing harmony with friends. We'd also go to the park and sing under the bridge near the lake for the echo. When it was cold out, we'd stand in the little heated lobby in the project's administration building, where my mom paid the rent each month.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.

When we were trying to get 'Jersey Boys' off the ground, I'd get, 'The Four Seasons? Who's going to care? There's the Beatles, there's the Rolling Stones.' But people know those stories. Here was a story no one knew.

With 'Sherry,' we were looking for a sound. We wanted to make the kind of mark that, if the radio was playing one of our songs, you knew who it was immediately. But I didn't want to sing like that my whole life.

My romantically favorite era is 78, 79 listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 4, the live tapes, echo chamber and break beats.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

I just love listening to the laughter.

I was up until all hours of the night, listening to stories, meeting great old comedians.

There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.

I started listening to music when I wrote when I had three sons at home.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

Whatever had been on the radio in the '60s; I mean we were always listening to the radio.

Because of the changes in the Padres team I played with last year, I felt like a veteran recently when I worked out with Jason Kendall and he told me he's liked listening to my records since he was a kid!

I think listening to real classic soul material made me learn how to feel music that's sung.

All of my style came from listening to records.

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time.

Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.

It was very hard to get any records, so the only source for us to really hear what was happening was listening to the Voice of America. We would be taping all the broadcast and then sharing the tapes and talking about it.

I've learned that I get blocked when my subconscious mind is telling me that I've taken the work in a wrong direction, and that once I start listening to what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I can work out the problem and get moving again.