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.

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.

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

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

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

From hard rhythms of Be-bop, the mellow harmonies of Cool, to atonal forays of Free and the Straight Ahead delivery of Modern, it’s all Jazz.

Musicianship is using your two ears.

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed.

Whenever there’s a change with Jazz and its aesthetics, it’s almost always reflected with a change in the culture.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.