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.

Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.

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 you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.

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

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.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.

Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?

I really feel like I made it a great record. I really feel good about it. In this day and age to make a record that you say, ‘This is different,’ that’s a tough nut. I did it by accident but it got done. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it.

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

We don’t talk music. We just play.

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.