It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
DUKE ELLINGTONSimplicity is a most complex form.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
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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 -
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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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.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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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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Critics have their purposes, 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 they did.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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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Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTON