Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
DUKE ELLINGTONNew music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
-
-
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON -
It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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 -
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
There is no art when one does something without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
DUKE ELLINGTON