The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTONIf it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
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Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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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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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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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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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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There is no art without intention.
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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”.
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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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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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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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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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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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Love 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.
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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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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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