Duke Ellington Quotes About Jazz
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King's son.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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There is no art without intention.
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Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
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I'm sure critics have their purpose, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.
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Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.
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Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.
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Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.
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By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.
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If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.
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Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs", searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
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If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
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I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!
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Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.
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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.
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The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.
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