"'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music."
"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?"
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Source: Artie Shaw, the Reluctant 'King of Swing', NPR, March 8, 2002.
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"If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much."
"Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper... a windshield wiper that's fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing 'Melancholy Baby' and you've got dance music."
"If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat."
"That's the clarinet I used to use... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything."
"I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less."