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.
DUKE ELLINGTONPeople do not retire. They are retired by others.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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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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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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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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I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
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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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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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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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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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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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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
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I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
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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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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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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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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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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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Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON