Duke Ellington Quotes About Music
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
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There is no art without intention.
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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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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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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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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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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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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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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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Critics have their purposes, 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 they did.
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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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There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
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It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
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Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs", searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
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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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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.
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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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The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
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