Glenn Miller

It’s been a big week for our side. Over on the beaches of Normandy our boys have fired the opening guns of the long awaited drive to liberate the world.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I haven’t a great Jazz band and I don’t want one.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.

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

Jazz is a living music; since its beginning has expressed the feelings, dreams and hopes of the people.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Music must be an innovation.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.