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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Duke Ellington

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Association Kind Man Yourself
You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Finding Silence Way Yourself
I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Myself Time
Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Missing Play
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!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Greatness Mediocre Musician Yourself
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Failure Kind Music Result Success
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!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Money Myself Pay Togetherness
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Goodness Taste True
Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Love
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Communication Dance Important Myself People
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creativity Modern
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Feeling Music Sound
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
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Boundary Classical Decision Difficult Lying
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Goodness Kind Music
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Country Enjoyment Listening Popular
Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Entrance Sound Wings

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

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