Duke Ellington

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.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Roaming through the jungle of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

Black and white players hadn’t appeared together in public before Teddy Wilson and I began working with B.G.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

Music should always be an adventure.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

[on Django Reinhardt] By far the most astonishing guitar player ever … Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player