"'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."
"You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature."
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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."