Count Basie

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, ‘Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

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

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

When you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.

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

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

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

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

Your sound is you and what you really feel inside.

You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.

Your humanity is your instrument.

Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I’m concerned with retaining that process.