Miles Davis

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands …If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

I know what I’ve done for music, but don’t call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

Jazz singing is like pornography. You can’t say what it is, but you know it when you see it.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.