Duke Ellington Quotes
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
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I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King's son.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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There is no art without intention.
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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
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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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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
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If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
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The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.
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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 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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I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
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How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
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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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Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
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I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.
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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.
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Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
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Simplicity is a most complex form
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The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
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It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.
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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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