Count Basie

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel… and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

Of course there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

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

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

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that’s all it is about is opinions.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

Play for the spiritual aspect, the emotion.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.