Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
DUKE ELLINGTONJazz is a good barometer of freedom.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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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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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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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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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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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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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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People do not retire. They are retired by others.
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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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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 biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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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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By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
DUKE ELLINGTON






