There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTONIt 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
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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Critics have their purposes, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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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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The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
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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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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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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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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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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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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
DUKE ELLINGTON