Zitate

When I was boy down in Texas a bunch of us used to go to the theater every Saturday morning. The organist played the songs that we knew and the crowd of us would join in singing. That was the way we let off steam. It was a good thing for all of us and, take it from me, many a boy was kept straight by singing those songs.

Some of our most popular numbers are by the great classical composers. Take our arrangements of 'The Flight of the Bumble Bee' or of 'The Afternoon of a Faun'. The kids go crazy over them In order to give them their proper rendering I added a string section to our band and, believe me, many people thought I was going nuts when when I hired those long-underwear boys. But it is not only the kids who like our stuff. Kreisler himself approved a record we made of our arrangement of his 'Caprice Viennoise'.

Band leaders must be like automobile manufacturers before the war. They must be bringing out new models all the time. We have to vary our programs, playing sweet numbers and jump numbers, and we have to play them different ways.