Basie Quotes & Sayings

I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it ... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves. — Count Basie

Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band. He's a way of life. — Lena Horne

Basie would lie on the mattress and talk endlessly, sometimes drinking from a bottle of Murree's whisky he'd bring with him, bought from one of the clandestine bars in Heer where there were locked cages for female drinkers, to prevent them from being sexually assaulted by the inebriated male clientele, as well as to stop the drunk women from killing every man in sight. — Nadeem Aslam

I'm saying: to be continued, until we meet again. Meanwhile, keep on listening and tapping your feet. — Count Basie

The hardest thing for a musician to learn is how to play WITH people. That's what made the Basie rhythm section. — Jo Jones

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 ... — Count Basie

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. — Count Basie

I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing. — Charles Lloyd

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter. — Billie Holiday

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers. — Buddy Rich

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

Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you, — George Hodgman

I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on. — Dave Brubeck

Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good. — B.B. King

Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra. — Quincy Jones

More than anybody else I'd like to thank Count Basie for teaching me how to perform. — Tony Bennett

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

Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well. — Christian McBride

I'll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I'd never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I'd never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn't much like it at first. — Count Basie

Dr. Ransome marked the exercises in the algebra textbook and gave him two strips of rice-paper bandage on which to solve the simultaneous equations. As he stood up, Dr. Ransome removed the three tomatoes from Jim's pocket. He laid them on the table by the wax tray.
'Did they come from the hospital garden?'
'Yes.' Jim gazed back frankly at Dr. Ransome. Recently he had begun to see him with a more adult eye. The long years of imprisonment, the constant disputes with the Japanese had made this young physician seem middle-aged. Dr. Ransome was often unsure of himself, as he was of Jim's theft.
'I have to give Basie something whenever I see him.'
'I know. It's a good thing that you're friends with Basie. He's a survivor, though survivors can be dangerous. Wars exist for people like Basie.' Dr. Ransome placed the tomatoes in Jim's hand. 'I want you to eat them, Jim. I'll get you something for Basie. — J.G. Ballard

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. — Count Basie

The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings ... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie ... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical. — Al Jarreau

Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles. — Ice Cube

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. — Count Basie

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings. — Kate Christensen

We were all influenced by Lester [Young]. Listen to the records that he made with [Count] Basie. Nobody's got what he's got. He's still the daddy. — Zoot Sims

Count Basie was college, but Duke Ellington was graduate school. — Clark Terry

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

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. — Count Basie

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 Basie

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

When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics - I was literally singing before I was talking. — Dan Hill

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. — Count Basie

Dig: I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. B'nai B'rith is goyish; Hadassah, Jewish.
If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish. — Lenny Bruce

I got to trumpet, finally. That's why I love to write for brass, and [Count] Basie and [Frank] Sinatra and all that stuff, 'cause that's just like part of my DNA. — Quincy Jones

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

Keep on listening & tapping your feet. — Count Basie

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

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

When I was 16 or 17 I heard the Count Basie band with Jo Jones and Lester Young and Herschel Evans and I couldn't believe it. They were the greatest swing band. I really fell in love with that sound. Everybody danced! — Illinois Jacquet

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

My dad was a jazz fan and he used to have lots of old 78s, so I grew up with big jazz bands and the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie - although I really liked show tunes from those big musicals as well. I've always kept my ears open, as it were, when it comes to music. It doesn't matter to me what type of music it is. If I like it, I'll listen to it. — Ric Sanders