Brian McKnight

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

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.

In my family on my mother’s side we’re all church musicians first so I don’t remember a time when we weren’t doing something musical. My brothers and I sang in a little quartet, my aunts and uncles sang and my grandfather was a minister of music in our church, so walking and talking was like doing music for us.

I’ve been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don’t have to worry about anything.

Jazz is about improvisation and the moment in time, doing it this way now and you’ll never do it this way twice.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

Music must be an innovation.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

Practice as if you are the worst, play as if you are the best!

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.