Artie Shaw Quotes

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijiana, and will expire on cocaine.

An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.

You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

Somebody asked me once, 'Do you think that swing will ever come back?' And I said, 'Do you think the 1938 Ford will ever come back?'

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.

If I could have done anything more, it would have been less

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.

I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?

Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

It ["Begin the Beguine"] became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.

I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it.