New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTONTomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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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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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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If 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.
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Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.
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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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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.
DUKE ELLINGTON