For me, music and life are all about style.
MILES DAVISJazz 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.
More Miles Davis Quotes
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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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You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
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You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.
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We’re not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got ’em, so they can keep ’em.
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The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
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Music is the framework around the silence.
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Play what you know and then play above that
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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
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In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.
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Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging – but they weren’t sweet.
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My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer.
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That’s the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.
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You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery.
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The only reason to write a new song is because you’re tired of the old ones.
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I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.
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Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
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White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?
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I’m out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I’m still playing.
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I like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies – other people can’t get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.
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It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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I don’t pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself…and I’m too vain to play anything I think is bad.
MILES DAVIS