Brandy Norwood

I can’t believe Tina Turner actually was on the same stage. I can’t believe I set foot on the same stage, and it’s going to be an album, people are going to buy it, and it’s going to be a video.

Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you.

I’m a little bit afraid to give my heart away right now. It’s very scary. I’m open to it, but I just want to make sure that I’m taking my time.

I have so much more to go through as a young lady. But oh my God. I feel like I can do anything.

I was rapping as a hobby. It was something I did for my friends and just played around on ideas and stuff like that.

This is truly a blessing. Breyon Prescott, Peter Edge and Tom Corson believe in me and have introduced me to a home that also believes and knows exactly what to do with the type of music I’m doing.

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music.

I’ve always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn’t have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.

I’d take my guitar and play on the streets. A gospel song would get me a pat on the head. But a blues would get me a dime. So you see why I stuck with the blues.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.