"I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves....It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story." -- Jazz great, pianist, composer and bandleader William "Count" Basie (8/21/1904 - 4/26/1984), from “Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie”, Plume. Basie was the first African American to win a Grammy Award in 1958, the first of nine Grammys. He was a Kennedy Center honoree, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his artistic achievements spanning 6 decades.
He once recounted that he was given his nickname "Count" by an announcer who said there already was a Duke (Ellington) and an Earl (Hines), so he should be called "Count." In jazz music, Basie was certainly royalty.
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