Count Basie

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

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

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

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.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

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 listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

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

To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical and spiritual need for me.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

Jazz is the false liquidation of art, instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

Practicing is like getting your vocabulary together to use on the gig.

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

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

To this day, I don’t like people walking on stage not looking good. You have to look good. If you feel special about yourself then you’re going to play special.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

I’m glad I don’t have perfect pitch because it can drive you crazy.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.