New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTONPlaying ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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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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The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
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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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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
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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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Problems are chances for us to do our best.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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Every man prays in his own language.
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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 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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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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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON