A Quote by Illinois Jacquet

When I was 16 or 17 I heard the Count Basie band with Jo Jones and Lester Young and Herschel Evans and I couldn't believe it. They were the greatest swing band. I really fell in love with that sound. Everybody danced!
I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.
We were all influenced by Lester [Young]. Listen to the records that he made with [Count] Basie. Nobody's got what he's got. He's still the daddy.
I am one hundred percent dedicated to Hellyeah. I love what I do in this band. I'm really proud of this band. Everybody in this band is such a special person, and the music that we make together, I really believe, is very special and the next level in my life.
I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
I've been listening to jazzmen, especially saxophonists, since the time of the early Count Basie records, which featured Lester Young. Pres was my first real influence, but the first horn I got was an alto, not a tenor.
Every good band in the world was a cover band first. The Beatles were and the Stones were. Everybody was a cover band.
There's always a Van der Graaf audience that wants to hear the band's sound. And totally fair enough. Why not? It's a band. You like the band, you like the band.
Count Basie isn't just a man, or even just a band. He's a way of life.
The Beatles weren't like any other band. Everybody in the band sang, which is why you knew everybody in the band.
I said that the only way I could have a band that would work in the format of my show is if the band were crap. So if I have a band they'd have to really suck.
It is really refreshing to hear a big band that has the ability to execute ensemble passages with swing and precision while retaining a "small group" feel during the solo sections. This kind of "tight, loose" approach is seldom heard in big bands, whether they are professional or not. Now, all the band needs is to hit the road and take the music around the world!
You either swing a band or don't swing a band and that's what's lacking today.. There aren't any guys who get back there and play with any kind of guts.
I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it's a band - everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.
I'll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I'd never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I'd never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn't much like it at first.
I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.
I never thought of us as a punk band, a metal band, or a new wave band. Just as a band band.
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