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There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

Miles Davis

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.
MILES DAVIS

Instrument Musician Oneself Thankful
I’m out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I’m still playing.
MILES DAVIS

Best Lips Myself Play
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
MILES DAVIS

Follow Musician Revolution
Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.
MILES DAVIS

Music Myself Sell Word
Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery.
MILES DAVIS

Freedom Ignorance Knowledge Slave
Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can’t do what we do is because they’re so comfortable doin’ what they do.
MILES DAVIS

Comfortable Music Reason
If I hear a song like “Time After Time.” I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin’ this song. I said, “God damnnnnn!”
MILES DAVIS

Goodness Music Myself Time Video
Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
MILES DAVIS

Fear Instrument Mistake Musician None One Liner
When kids don’t learn about their own heritage in school, they just don’t care about school… But you won’t see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
MILES DAVIS

Children Heritage History Learning Ourselves Story
He sounded to me like he’s supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
MILES DAVIS

Oneself People Question Sound Time
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.
MILES DAVIS

Music Play
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
MILES DAVIS

Attitude Character Musician Play
Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
MILES DAVIS

Instrument Play Yourself
We’re not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got ’em, so they can keep ’em.
MILES DAVIS

Music Play Sadness White
I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.
MILES DAVIS

Artistic Music People Reach Thinking
I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great art and music happens.
MILES DAVIS

Art Greatness Music Play
I usually write from the rhythm section…If a drummer got a funky beat on some things – like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that’s even – I can write something.
MILES DAVIS

Myself Rhythm Writing
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
MILES DAVIS

Instrument Man Myself Player
Food makes my mind sluggish.
MILES DAVIS

Food Mindset Myself
For me, music and life are all about style.
MILES DAVIS

Life Music Style
You can’t compete with Sweets’ sound and time feel. It’s impossible.
MILES DAVIS

Feeling Impossible Sound Time Yourself
Music is the framework around the silence.
MILES DAVIS

Framework Music Perspective Silence
White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?
MILES DAVIS

Known Label Thinking Yourself
I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.
MILES DAVIS

Entertainment Musician Myself Trying
We don’t play to be seen. I’m addicted to music, not audiences.
MILES DAVIS

Addiction Audience Music Myself Play Seen
I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.
MILES DAVIS

Enjoyment Listening White
Music is an addiction.
MILES DAVIS

Addiction Music One Liner

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

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There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

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