A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
DUKE ELLINGTONI’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.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
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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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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.
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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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By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
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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.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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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.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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There are two kinds of worries – those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter.
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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