The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTONDancing 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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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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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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 are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.
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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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Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
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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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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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There is no art without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON






