List of 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.

San Francisco Is One Of The Great Cultural Plateaus Of The World - One Of The Really Urbane Communities In The United States - One Of The Truly Cosmopolitan Places And For Many, Many Years, It Always Has Had A Warm Welcome For Human Beings From All Over The World

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.

I Don't Need Time, I Need A Deadline.

Without A Deadline, Baby, I Wouldn't Do Nothing.

My Biggest Kick In Music -playing Or Writing- Is When I Have A Problem. Without A Problem To Solve, How Much Interest Do You Take In Anything?

I Began By Tinkering Around With Some Old Tunes I Knew. Then, Just To Try Something Different, I Set To Putting Some Music To The Rhythm That I Used In Jerking Ice-cream Sodas At The Poodle Dog. I Fooled Around With The Tune More And More Until At Last, Lo And Behold, I Had Completed My First Piece Of Finished Music.

In Music, As You Develop A Theme Or Musical Idea, There Are Many Points At Which Directions Must Be Decided, And At Any Time I Was In The Throes Of Debate With Myself, Harmonically Or Melodically, I Would Turn To Billy Strayhorn. We Would Talk, And Then The Whole World Would Come Into Focus. The Steady Hand Of His Good Judgment Pointed To The Clear Way That Was Fitting For Us. He Was Not, As He Was Often Referred To By Many, My Alter Ego. 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.

Critics Have Their Purposes, 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 They Did.

A Musical Profit Outweighs A Financial Loss.

Now I Can Say Loudly And Openly What I Have Been Saying To Myself On My Knees.

Music Is My Mistress And She Plays Second Fiddle To No One.

I Don’t Believe In Categories Of Any Kind, And When You Speak Of Problems Between Blacks And Whites In The U.s.a. You Are Referring To Categories Again.