You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.
— Charlie Parker
Unconventional Bandstand quotations
My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including 4th of July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand.
How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense.
I think the most important thing that I can offer young musicians is once you get up on the bandstand, understanding that you're now asking this prayer to come through you. When you think about music it's got to be that way. Just the thrill of being able to play another note, not to win anything or get a trophy.
I started to study the flute in 1951.
The flute has been utilized by African-American musicians as far back as the early Twenties. If you take a look at some of the old pictures of Chick Webb, then you will see the flute right there on the bandstand among the woodwinds.
I am the Alexander Graham Bell of the phone company, the Christopher Columbus of America because after 'The Twist' everything changed, .. Watch the films from 1958 up to 1959, and watch American Bandstand during that time. After the song came out, everything was different.
The best practice you can get is on the bandstand, but in between gigs I feel I have to stay in shape.
The bandstand is a sacred place.
If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.
The bandstand is an incredible space.
It is really a sacred space. One of the things that is really sacred about it is that you have no opportunity to think about the future, or the past.
Some of the wise boys who say my music is loud, blatant and that's all should see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the snow to see the band... to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all their own.
I have similar feelings, actually. The intimacy of a club: you can see the people, you can almost feel them; you can't beat that. People will say things, and shout out, it's almost like they're up on the bandstand with you.
We got on American Bandstand, where kids would dance to a record and then rate it. We called ourselves Tom and Jerry. I was Jerry.
Someone like Jay-Z does have a timeless quality, but it's much different than ours. You can look back at something like "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors or the music that was on American Bandstand in the 1950s-'60s.
I think I would like to be in Victorian times.
Small town. Bandstands. Summer. That kind of thing. Without disease.
I wish we could just stay on the bandstand, it's so peaceful up here.
I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail.
The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!
The Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in .
.. Guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy and there was lots of plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all. I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn.
How did we lose our culture? Black people used to all do the same thing on Saturdays. We all watched "Soul Train" and "American Bandstand", got our fashion and dance tips, and then we emulated it and bought those records that we heard. Now it seems like there is no culture. The school of fish are all separate. Everybody's just randomized, listening to their own thing in their earbuds, and there's no uniformity. That bothers me.
I've known the glory of the stage and the glory of the spotlight.
I still crave it. I want to be on 'American Bandstand' and 'Soul Train' as a solo artist. As a producer, songwriter and arranger, I help other artists say what they want to say. But on my records, I say what I want to say.
Listen more to the other players on the bandstand than you do to yourself.
Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right.
This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.