• 
• 
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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Duke Ellington

Related Topics

MissingPlay

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More Duke Ellington Quotes

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  You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.

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• 

  Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.

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• 

  Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.

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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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• 

  Problems are chances for us to do our best.

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• 

  People do not retire. They are retired by others.

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  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.

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• 

  It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.

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  Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

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  New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.

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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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• 

  It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

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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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• 

  I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

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• 

  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

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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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