The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTONA goal is a dream with a finish line.
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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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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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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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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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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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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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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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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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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Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON






