Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
DUKE ELLINGTONI don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
More Duke Ellington Quotes
-
-
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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 -
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 -
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I’m sure critics have their purpose, 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 he did.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
DUKE ELLINGTON