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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Communication Dance Important Myself People
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Epitome Music Original Standard
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

Live Music Myself Occupation Profession
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
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Boundary Classical Decision Difficult Lying
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!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Greatness Mediocre Musician Yourself
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Financial Loss Musical Profit
You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Finding Silence Way Yourself
Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Love
Problems are chances for us to do our best.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Best Chance Ourselves Problem
The artist must say it without saying it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Artist Language
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Knowledge Master Musician
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Ourselves Selfish Survive Virtue
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Music Sing Song Sweet
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Learning People Teaching Understand Word
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Cloud Pass Sky
Every man prays in his own language.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Himself Language Man Prayer

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

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