Brian McKnight

I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

I just want people to take a step back, take a deep breath and actually look at something with a different perspective. But most people will never do that.

Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.

I’m the fifth generation of Seventh Day Adventists and the youngest of four brothers. When I was still very small, we formed a gospel quartet.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

I’m not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I’m not thinking about anything other than – I’m just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I’m just going to do it.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!

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.

I’ve studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it.

You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.

I’m just trying to create context for me to improve my musicianship.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

We’re here to have a ball.

[on Django Reinhardt] By far the most astonishing guitar player ever … Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.