Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
DUKE ELLINGTONPlaying ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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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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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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Every man prays in his own language.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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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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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”.
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I’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.
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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
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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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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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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.
DUKE ELLINGTON