Quote

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

Artie Shaw

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Artie Shaw
Age: 94 †
Born: 1910
Born: May 23
Died: 2004
Died: December 29
Bandleader
Clarinetist
Composer
Conductor
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Music Arranger
Saxophonist
Writer
New York City
New York
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky
Hung
Listening
Scalpel
Talk
Scalpels
Like
Benny
Clarinet
Goodman
Surgeon
Surgeons

More quotes by Artie Shaw

Image
I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.
Artie Shaw
Image
I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem to indicate that once we've defined something, we don't need to think about it anymore.
Artie Shaw
Image
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.
Artie Shaw
Image
You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.
Artie Shaw
Image
If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.
Artie Shaw
Image
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.
Artie Shaw
Image
An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.
Artie Shaw
Image
An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.
Artie Shaw
Image
When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'
Artie Shaw
Image
People ask what those women saw in me. Let's face it, I wasn't a bad-looking stud. But that's not it. It's the music it's standing up there under the lights. A lot of women just flip looks have nothing to do with it. You call Mick Jagger good-looking?
Artie Shaw
Image
There's such a cynicism about the phrase 'I laughed all the way to the bank.' It's as though money is what you're doing, rather than playing music. If you're playing a money game, why not get into banking?
Artie Shaw
Image
The bandleader is a musician trying to sell a mass commodity and in order to do so successfully he must accommodate himself to mass standards. Unless he can do this comfortably, sooner or later he is sunk.
Artie Shaw
Image
I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.
Artie Shaw
Image
I wanted to resign from the planet, not just music. It stopped being fun with success. Money got in the way. Everybody got greedy, including me. Fear set in. I got miserable when I became a commodity.
Artie Shaw
Image
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?'
Artie Shaw
Image
The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.
Artie Shaw
Image
If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.
Artie Shaw
Image
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?
Artie Shaw
Image
You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, I like you and why don't we get together? What are you going to say, No? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature.
Artie Shaw
Image
The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing he was swinging.
Artie Shaw