Louis Armstrong

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

What we play is life.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I can’t sing it straight. I have no choice but to swing it.

Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.

Music is a verb.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

The prospect of having to sit through one of Rachmaninov’s extended symphonies or piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those notes, and to what end?

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.