Best Duke Ellington Famous Quotes & Sayings
36 Best Duke Ellington Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.— Duke Ellington
I don't need time, I need a deadline.— Duke Ellington
I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.— Charles Lloyd
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.— Duke Ellington
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.— Duke Ellington
There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly.— Boris Vian
My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.— Toru Takemitsu
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.— Duke Ellington
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!— Duke Ellington
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillac's, and the beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.— Duke Ellington
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.— Duke Ellington
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.— Duke Ellington
The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me."— Wynton Marsalis
I learned from Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, the Nicholas Brothers, the whole thing, the whole schmear. [The Cotton Club] was a great place because it hired us, for one thing, at a time when it was really rough [for Black performers].— Lena Horne
Every man prays in his own language.— Duke Ellington
When I got through, Duke Ellington stood up and started the applause.— Ruth Brown
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.— Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington was famous for hs very original harmonic patterns.— Lawrence Welk
It really was truth or consequences, and Billy went with truth. It was just incredible." Forsaking public prominence, Strayhorn found personal freedom in service to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Now there might not be a Billy Strayhorn Orchestra. But there was a Billy Strayhorn.— David Hajdu
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.— Duke Ellington
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.— Duke Ellington
Simplicity is a most complex form— Duke Ellington
I think it was Duke Ellington who once said that we're always most pleased with our current record. I mean, you have to assume that you learn from one, and you do something better next time.— George Shearing
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.— Duke Ellington
So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops.— Ed Smith
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.— Duke Ellington
You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it.— Duke Ellington
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.— Duke Ellington
I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too.— Dave Smalley
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.— Duke Ellington
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.— Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it!— Billy Taylor
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.— Duke Ellington
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.— Duke Ellington
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.— Duke Ellington
Problems are chances for us to do our best.— Duke Ellington
