It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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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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My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of – or reincarnated from – royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTON