Count Basie
Count Basie
William James "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 years old, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth21 August 1904
CityRed Bank, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.
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.
If you play a tune and a person don't tap their feet, don't play the tune.
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.
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!
Keep on listening & tapping your feet.
I got everything I wanted. When I was young in Kansas City, I knew nothing about Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, of all those concert halls, of all those countries. I did not know what it was like to direct a band... 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.
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 think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter,
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.
If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.
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 . . .