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 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 . . .

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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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