Problems are chances for us to do our best.
DUKE ELLINGTONThe most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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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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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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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 is no art without intention.
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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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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
DUKE ELLINGTON