He sounded to me like he’s supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
MILES DAVISWhen kids don’t learn about their own heritage in school, they just don’t care about school… But you won’t see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
More Miles Davis Quotes
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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If I hear a song like “Time After Time.” I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin’ this song. I said, “God damnnnnn!”
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If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.
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It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
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People will go for anything they don’t understand if it’s got enough hype.
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Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.
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In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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The only reason to write a new song is because you’re tired of the old ones.
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I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
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If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.
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I’ll play it first and figure out what it’s called later.
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Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
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Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
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When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they’re still here and passing it on to others.
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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That was my gift having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.
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I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
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Drummers – sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
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I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.
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Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging – but they weren’t sweet.
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You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played.
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You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself.
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I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great art and music happens.
MILES DAVIS