Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTONGray skies are just clouds passing over.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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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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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.
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There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
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My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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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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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
DUKE ELLINGTON






