Duke Ellington

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

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

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.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

When you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Music is to the soul what water is to the body.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

I wrote “Pilot of My Destiny” because of my love of flying. The fact that my brother is a pilot inspired me to write it. I call him pilot. He calls me copilot.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra’s. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

There’s so many ways you can hit one note.

Jimmy (Wakely) told me, ‘I don’t want you to sound so much like Dinah Washington.’ So, I thought, ‘How can I get around this?’ And one of the people I really dug was Patti Page. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to sound like her.’ I actually did with a couple curly-cues thrown in for effect, but, that’s how I started getting away from the predominant Dinah influence, and getting my own style together.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.