Swing Era Quotes

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

Swing is my main weapon.

I've always liked Frank Sinata and Big Band music.

When I came to New York after high school in 1959 and started to meet musicians, 'Hot House' was like a standard jam session tune.

Charlie Christian played amplified guitar with Benny Goodman's quartet. He was the greatest guitar player that ever was. But he never looked up from the guitar. But I put a little dance to it. They appreciate seein' something along with hearin' something.

Be-bop wasn't developed in any deliberate way.

Early '90s, I was big, big into Sinatra. I was in college. I was fascinated.

I saw Sinatra many times. I saw him at Caesars. I saw him at the Sands.

Nat King Cole - I listen to him a lot.

The one radio voice that I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.

I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.

I didn't really get crazy about Bob Wills until 1940.

It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.

When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys are simply the best band that ever was.

Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

My father was a part of that generation, and my mother, too - the late-'30s, early-'40s big-band generation. Frank Sinatra, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday - all that stuff was in my background.

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

It's not really a popular consensus to sing Sinatra - which I love! And I just think it's so cool that he disliked rock n' roll so much.

I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it.

The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.

The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.