By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
DUKE ELLINGTONSelfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
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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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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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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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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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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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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
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New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
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The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
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It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
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Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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Problems are chances for us to do our best.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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