Duke Ellington

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 classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

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

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

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.

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

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Whenever there’s a change with Jazz and its aesthetics, it’s almost always reflected with a change in the culture.

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

I would’ve loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn’t good enough.