It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
DUKE ELLINGTONIt don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
DUKE ELLINGTONYou have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
DUKE ELLINGTONThe 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.
DUKE ELLINGTONThere is no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTONGray skies are just clouds passing over.
DUKE ELLINGTONEveryone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTONThe Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTONIf 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.
DUKE ELLINGTONOf the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
DUKE ELLINGTONEverybody 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 ELLINGTONSomehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTONPlaying ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
DUKE ELLINGTONMy 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?
DUKE ELLINGTONNew 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.
DUKE ELLINGTONProblems are chances for us to do our best.
DUKE ELLINGTONLove 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.
DUKE ELLINGTON