Quotes by Duke Ellington - Page 2

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?
Duke Ellington / Composer
Art
Modern
Modern Art
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Daughter
Music
Men
Jazz
Mother
Always Man Your
Associate
Man Always Your
Large
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Inspirational
Latter
Two
Worry
Time Something About
Spend
Worries
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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!
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Band
Together
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Arms
Eye
Mines
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Of the One O'Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: "I wish it were mine".
Duke Ellington / Composer
House
White
Wish
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Compulsion
Jazz
Occupation
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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?
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Problem
Writing
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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 / Composer
Travel
Boards
Sugar
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Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Essentials
Selfishness
Survival
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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!
Duke Ellington / Composer
Band
Drummer
Mediocre
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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 / Composer
Children
Honesty
Miracle
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New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
Duke Ellington / Composer
New York
Cadillacs
Dollars
Rich
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Believe
Kind
Problem
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Funny
Girl
Music
Piano
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Epitome
Jazz
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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 / Composer
Made
Musician
Problem
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Love Is
Proof
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On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Becoming
Bible
People
Taught
Life People More
Acquainted
Began
Mine
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Children
Mind
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Brainwash
Canada
Today
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Play
Writing
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Critics
Done
Littles
Should Have
Thinking
Did
Away
Carried
Concerning
Purposes
Rather
Supposed
Themselves
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Done
Should Have
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
New Orleans
Too Late
Trying
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There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Sound
Successful
Two
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My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Blessed
Mother
Taken
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The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Pulse
Rocks
Roots
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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
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Lines
Lying
Tin Pan Alley
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Dance
People
Play
Thinking
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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 world
Duke Ellington / Composer
Community
San Francisco
Years
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Creativity
Dog
Ice Cream
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Music
Country
Expression
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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. ... 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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Mistress
Play
Two
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Eye
Hands
Ideas
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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.
Duke Ellington / Composer
Children
Dog
Honesty
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Duke Ellington Quotes - Page 2

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