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 ELLINGTONWhat does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 is a good barometer of freedom.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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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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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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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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There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
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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 Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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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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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
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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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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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