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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 . . .

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

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

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.

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

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

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.'

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