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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

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

Bond Friendship Myself Right
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Failure Kind Music Result Success
My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of – or reincarnated from – royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Blessing Human Inheritance Mom Myself Royalty
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bad Category Goodness Listening Stop
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Alive Fans Himself Suspect
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Goodness Taste True
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Himself Important Known Listening Musician
Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Complex Form Simplicity
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
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Country Enjoyment Listening Popular
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Association Audience Listening Music Perspective Play
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Believe Black Kind White Yourself
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Blue Energy Myself Writing
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Lazy Limitation Procrastination
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Interest Money Music
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”.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hear Myself Performance

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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