Duke Ellington
Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.Collection: Dance
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.Collection: Music
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.Collection: Loss
It's like an act of murder - you play with intent to commit something.Collection: Music
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.Collection: Baby
In music, as you develop a theme or musical idea, there are many points at which directions must be decided, and at any time I was in the throes of debate with myself, harmonically or melodically, I would turn to Billy Strayhorn. We would talk, and then the whole world would come into focus. The steady hand of his good judgment pointed to the clear way that was fitting for us. He was not, as he was often referred to by many, my alter ego. Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Dog
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.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Music
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.Collection: New Orleans
San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the worldCollection: Years
There is no art when one does something without intention.Collection: Music
Hurry, get on board, it's comin', listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the "A" train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.Collection: Travel
I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King's son.Collection: Kings
Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Funny
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.Collection: Thoughtful
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!Collection: Inspirational
Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.Collection: Sweet
Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.Collection: Canada
A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.Collection: Beauty
There is no art without intention.Collection: Music
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!Collection: Music
Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.Collection: Wings
Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Music
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?Collection: Music
New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky.Collection: Hell
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. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.Collection: Play
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.Collection: Music
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.Collection: Jazz
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.Collection: Believe
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.Collection: Live For Today
Simplicity is a most complex form.Collection: Simplicity