In talking about Blanton before you were mentioning the difficulties bassists had in big bands because of the lack of amplification. Now, you had to play very fast with Dizzy Gillespie. Did you have amplification by that time? How did you deal with…

Ray Brown: Well, I didn’t play fast solos. We were just playing fast tempos.

Christian McBride: Things To Come! [LAUGHS]

Ray Brown: When I was talking about playing fast I was talking about the way Christian McBride plays now. 20-30-40 years ago you wouldn’t have heard all those notes he’s playing. Now you can hear every one of them.

But then, from what I gather, people heard you pretty clearly, and those are some tempos that havent been caught up with yet!

Ray Brown: Were not discussing tempos, now. Were discussing solo lines. That’s a big difference. Nobody dared play anything that fast because you couldn’t hear it. Oscar Pettiford played some magnificent solos, and you didn’t really get to hear him until he joined Duke Ellington.

from: http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2009/12/16/remembering-ray-brown