Count Basie

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

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.

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

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

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.

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

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

You gotta mean it and you gotta treat it gentle.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

To play without passion is inexcusable.

Especially, I want my work-and the trios if possible-to sing.

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

Do it again on the next verse and people think you meant it.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

I’ll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I’m always writing music.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

When it comes to music, don’t lie to yourself; just tell yourself the truth.

Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.