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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

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Love
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
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
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
Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Complex Form Simplicity
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Blue Energy Myself Writing
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hell Music Time
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Evidence Love Myself Yourself
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
Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Be Yourself Effort Hard Work Inspirational Self Love
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bad Category Goodness Listening Stop
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
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
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
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Contribution Expression Music Myself Problem
Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Missing Play

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Duke Ellington Quotes