Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTONI don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
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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 musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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Problems are chances for us to do our best.
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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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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
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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
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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.
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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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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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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!
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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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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
DUKE ELLINGTON