Count Basie Quotes

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

Learn to deal with the valleys and the hills will take care of themselves.

It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.

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

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

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

I was always willing to say, "Let's see what happens," when something came up that looked like it might help me get a little closer to where I wanted to be . . .

Keep on listening & tapping your feet.

I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter.

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 a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

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.

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 don't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating.

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.

Freddie Green has been my right arm for thirty years. And if he leaves the band one day, I'll probably leave with him.

Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I've ever heard.

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.