Duke Ellington

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

It’s all music.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

Roaming through the jungle of ‘oohs’ 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.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

To work is to feel alive.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius.

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.

You can be beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than most of your usual ideas.

I’ll be writing songs till I die. There’s just no question.

I always had a deep feeling to be one with the very minute I’m in.