Some bandleaders I’ve known and worked for, when you had a solo and you got a real big hand, you didn’t get another solo. I worked with one: I won’t call names, but he played clarinet. Everybody in the All Stars got a chance, your spot where you went out and did your thing, your solo spot. He wanted you to go out there and get a standing ovation if you could, stand on your eyelashes and get a standing ovation – he loved that. Because he knew that all he had to do was walk right up behind you, smile, unfurl that handkerchief and look at the audience and he’d wash you away! And it wasn’t an ego thing, it was just the way it was. Because he realized the better you were the better it made his band.
As quoted in Armstrong by David Bradbury. Haus Publishing. 2003. p. 92
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