Duke Ellington Quotes

If Anybody Was Mr. Jazz It Was Louis Armstrong. He Was The Epitome Of Jazz And Always Will Be. He Is What I Call An American Standard, An American Original.

The Problem Of Expressing The Contributions That Benny Carter Has Made To Popular Music Is So Tremendous It Completely Fazes Me, So Extraordinary A Musician Is He.

Billy Strayhorn Was My Right Arm, My Left Arm, All The Eyes In The Back Of My Head, My Brainwaves In His Head, And His In Mine.

New York Is A Place Where The Rich Walk, The Poor Drive Cadillacs, And Beggars Die Of Malnutrition With Thousands Of Dollars Hidden In Their Mattresses.

Playing 'bop' Is Like Playing Scrabble With All The Vowels Missing.

Of The One O'clock Lab Band After Hearing Their Performance, And Sitting In With Them At The White House: "i Wish It Were Mine".

I Fluffed Off The Guy Who Kept Requesting Tunes All Night, Then Found Out He Was The King's Son.

On Becoming More Acquainted With The Word Of The Bible, I Began To Understand So Much More Of What I Had Been Taught, And Of What I Had Learned About Life And About The People In Mine.

Hurry, Get On Board, It's Comin', Listen To Those Rails A-thrumming All Aboard. Get On The "a" Train, Soon You Will Be On Sugar Hill In Harlem.

There Is No Art When One Does Something Without Intention.

I Like Any And All Of My Associations With Music: Writing, Playing, And Listening. We Write And Play From Our Perspective, And The Audience Listens From Its Perspective. If And When We Agree, I Am Lucky.

The Word [jazz] Never Lost Its Association With Those New Orleans Bordellos. In The 1920s I Used To Try To Convince Fletcher Henderson That We Ought To Call What We Were Doing 'negro Music'. But It's Too Late For That Now.