"We've got great musicians today, but they don't play any music
to get those feet going out there! It's impossible to explain, but something happens between an audience and a band, a kind of electricity. It's one to one, you and me, and that's the way it goes down. That's the reason the big band era happened. Later on it died because it got too strange and many of the groups refused to play dances. It had nothing to do with rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, punk rock or the Beatles. When you get up on that stand, you've got to have the right tempo and the right music to tear up the world!"
—Count Basie, as told to Stanley Dance in 1979, in The World of Count Basie
Comments