There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
DUKE ELLINGTONThere is no art when one does something without intention.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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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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Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
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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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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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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 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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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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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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You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
DUKE ELLINGTON