If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
DUKE ELLINGTONNew music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
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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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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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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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New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
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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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Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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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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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
DUKE ELLINGTON