Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
MILES DAVISI 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.
More Miles Davis Quotes
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.
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If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.
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Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.
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It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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What’s swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don’t have to ask anybody if that’s good music or not. You can always feel it.
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We don’t play to be seen. I’m addicted to music, not audiences.
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It takes a long time to sound like yourself.
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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!”
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White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?
MILES DAVIS -
There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.
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A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it.
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I always listen to what I can leave out.
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You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.
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You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
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At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.
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If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!
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Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ’em a lot of money.
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I’m not messing around with nobody’s woman. If I want a woman I go get her – you know what I mean?
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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
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If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.
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I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
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It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?
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You can’t compete with Sweets’ sound and time feel. It’s impossible.
MILES DAVIS