PJ Morton looks back on his career

PJ Morton is a triple threat in music.

He is a successful singer, songwriter and pianist.

One of the biggest musical idols he decided to emulate was Stevie Wonder.

“So Stevie was really a role model for me, for someone who played keyboards and wanted to write songs and sing,” Morton said. “He just became my number one influence. So I think a lot of times that comes out.”

In some of his songs, listeners hear Wonder’s influence on the 43-year-old artist.

Morton said it hasn’t conformed to what the music industry thinks it should look or sound like.

Their success is due to hard work and dedication. The Grammy Award-winning artist hopes to encourage others to dream big.

“The route I took to get here, you know it. Winning five Grammys independently is not the path I saw growing up. You had to be on a major label, you had to do it this way. And so I feel like I’m always the underdog,” Morton explained.

In addition to his success as a solo artist and with his personal band, many of his R&B fans don’t know that he is also the keyboardist for the hit pop group Maroon 5.

“I’ve been in the band [for] 14 years, but every year they discover that there is a black man in Maroon 5. And then they discover that the black man is PJ Morton.”

The New Orleans native began playing piano when he was just a child, growing up as the son of a preacher.

On his journey to becoming a star, he spent about a year living in the Northeast Bronx trying to break into the New York music scene.

“I remember the first time I ever rode a train. I was lost and I didn’t know what to do. I remember I was about to miss the train and this guy held the door open for me and he said, ‘Hey, hey, hey, I got you. ’ And I said, ‘Man, New York isn’t that bad,’” he said.

Morton recently traveled to Africa to experience his roots. He gave himself 30 days to write and record his new album “Cape Town to Cairo,” all while traveling around the continent.

The musician said that black music is important and responsible for many genres.

“It’s everything to me. You know, when you talk about where I started, the church, gospel music, the effect that it had on me. The effect that gospel music had on soul music and how we got to R&B music,” he said.

And rock and roll and pop music, Morton added.

And the musical blessings keep coming. He can proudly say, like many champions, that he is going to Disney World.

“Yes, I will be at Disney World and Disney Land this fall. I just wrote, the first black songwriter, to write a song for a Disney attraction. It’s for the first black princess, Tiana,” Morton said.

The new attraction, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, opened on June 28.

Morton also has a book coming out this fall about his life called “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.”