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 ELLINGTONBilly 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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
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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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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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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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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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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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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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My 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?
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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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Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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Of 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 ELLINGTON






