As a drummer, Chick [Webb] had his own ideas about what he wanted to do. Some musicians are dancers, and Chick was. You can dance with a lot of things besides your feet… Chick Webb was a dance-drummer who painted pictures of dances with his drums. Way back, at the Cotton Club, we were always tailoring orchestrations to fit the dances. If you listen to the figures in some of Strayhorn's pieces, like "U.M.M.G.," those are dances--tap dances maybe--and you can't mistake what they essentially are. The reason why Chick Webb had such control, such command of his audiences at the Savoy ballroom, was because he was always in communication with the dancers and felt it the way they did. And that is probably the biggest reason why he could cut all the other bands that went in there. << less