Les Baxter

Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.

You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

Any good music must be an innovation.

I've been down there 6 times and there's nothing like Brazilian percussion.

I don't think the record company is aware of it. Because they just bury my albums and don't release them.

I love doing concert music.

That was when the Spanish came in and conquered the Aztecs. I thought that was a clever thing.

I write emotional music.

I was working all the time I was in college. I was working so much that I could hardly do my college work.

I don't know what the problem with Capitol is. Some one's got to wake 'em up. Prod 'em a little bit.

I did the Broadway album unfortunately in a year when there were no hits.

In a sense, a hit belongs to the person who made it popular, but if a tune is good enough to attain tremendous success, then it certainly deserves more than one version, one treatment, one approach.

I aim my arrangements at what will fit and colorfully frame the song in the best way possible.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

I don't try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.

Well, that's the secret of commerciality, a simple style and you stick with it.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.