Louis Armstrong
There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.Collection: Music
I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for.Collection: Family
'Cat?' 'Cat' can be anybody from the guy in the gutter to a lawyer, doctor, the biggest man to the lowest man, but if he's in there with a good heart and enjoy the same music together, he's a cat.Collection: Music
I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.Collection: Time
All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.Collection: Music
I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I'm ready, whether it's rehearsal or anything.Collection: Home
Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.Collection: Music
What we play is life.Collection: Life
Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.Collection: Life
If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.
We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it's been made into 'Satchmo' - 'Satchmo' Armstrong.
I like kissable lips. A woman's lips must say, 'Come here and kiss me, Pops.'
I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don't have, I don't need.
I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.
Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.
Well, I tell you... the first chorus, I plays the melody. The second chorus, I plays the melody round the melody, and the third chorus, I routines.
We never did try to get together and to show the younger Negroes such as myself, to try and even to show that he has ambitions - and with just a little encouragement, I could have really done something worthwhile. But instead, we did nothing but let the young upstarts know that they were young and simple, and that was that.
When I play, maybe 'Back o' Town Blues,' I'm thinking about one of the old, low-down moments - when maybe your woman didn't treat you right. That's a hell of a moment when a woman tell you, 'I got another mule in my stall.'
You blows who you is.
When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an 'order from Al Capone,' Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'
The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
I gathered that those two Big-shot Boys, Joe + Fletcher, just was afraid to let me sing, thinking maybe I'd sort of ruin their reputations with their musical public. They not knowing that I had been singing all of my life. In churches, etc. I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.
Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret...Collection: Baby
Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.Collection: Finding Yourself
Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.Collection: Heart
Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser.Collection: Baby
If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.Collection: Life
Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.Collection: Inspirational
My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.Collection: Music
I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.Collection: Inspirational
And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.Collection: Thinking
To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!Collection: Jazz
A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.Collection: Cat
The best I can do is stay happy.Collection: Stay Happy
Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.Collection: Music
It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics dope and all of that stuff. It is a thousand times better than whiskey. It is an assistant and a friend.Collection: Weed
I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand.Collection: Mouths
If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.Collection: Music
You've got to be good or as bad as the devil.Collection: Devil
Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.Collection: Cat
Musicians in my day had nicknames. My name was "Satchel Mouth," like a doctor's satchel. When I went to England this fellow was strictly English, and he was editor of the newspaper there. He shook my hand after I got off the train and said, "Hello, Satchmo." So right away my trombone player said, "Mmm, the man thinks you have mo' mouth than Satchel Mouth." So I was stuck with it, and it turned out all right.Collection: Player
You got to love to be able to playCollection: Play
As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.Collection: Home
I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.Collection: Play
All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance toCollection: Mean
I'll bet right now most of the youngsters and hot club fans who hear the name Storyville hasn't the least idea that it consisted of some of the biggest prostitutes in the world ... Standing in their doorways nightly in their fine and beautiful negligees -- faintly calling to the boys as they passed their cribs.Collection: Beautiful
When I go to the Gate, I'll play a duet with Gabriel. Yeah, we'll play 'Sleepy Time Down South' and 'Hello, Dolly!.' Then he can blow a couple that he's been playing up there all the time.Collection: Music