Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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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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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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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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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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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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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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
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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.
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
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Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
DUKE ELLINGTON